General Motors’ Finance Arm Joins Blockchain Data Security Initiative

United States automotive giant General Motors (GM) has become the latest member to join blockchain startup Spring Labs’ partner project to enhance data security, the company confirmed in a press release Feb. 11.

GM, which has experimented with the technology before, will join the Spring Founding Industry Partners (SPIF) Program, which launched in January.

Now with almost 20 participants, the scheme aims to address issues in data provenance through collaborative research.

Spring Labs, as Cointelegraph reported, plans to release its first related products this year.

“As the captive finance arm for General Motors and one of the world’s largest auto finance providers, we are continually innovating and evolving our fraud prevention and detection capabilities to better serve and protect our customers and dealers,” said Mike Kanarios, chief strategy officer at GM Financial commented in the press release.

Quoted by Forbes, Spring Labs’ CEO Adam Jiwan suggested that if successful, further participation could extend to GM’s operations more widely.

Jiwan explained:

“We came together with the view that we could develop a series of use cases that would match some of [GM Financial’s] core business priorities as a lender, or potentially [those of] GM as a parent company.”

The press release also notes that GM Financial is the first to join SPIF.

GM has taken an increasingly active role in blockchain development in recent years. In late 2017, GM Financial became one of the earliest members of Hyperledger, an open-source enterprise blockchain project that has since accrued various well-known names. Hyperledger currently provides the technology behind IBM’s blockchain platform.

Six months later, GM launched its own cross-industry blockchain association along with other major car manufacturers. In December, GM filed a patent on using the technology to handle data, specifically relating to autonomous vehicles.