Blockchain: Is it hype?  69

• UAE Trade Connect (Etislat): UAE Trade Connect (UTC) is a national

trade finance platform wholly owned by Etisalat Group. The main pur-

pose of the Blockchain-based platform is to de-risk trade finance trans-

actions in the financial sector. As of the date of writing (23 August

2021), UTC had seven leading banks in the UAE to make a consortium.

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⚬Website: https://www.etisalatdigital.ae/en/uae-trade-connect.jsp

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⚬Technology used: Hyperledger fabric

• we.trade: we-trade is a Europe-based trade finance platform based

on blockchain. It is Europe’s largest consortium of 16 banks and

growing fast. we.trade offers an end-to-end trade finance platform

with multiple services and some of them are live including automa-

tion of payments based on pre-agreed conditions through smart

contracts, bank payment undertaking (BPU), BPU financing and

invoice financing.

In summary, it offers the following services to make it even more

attractive:

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⚬Event-based automatic payment triggers through smart contacts

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⚬Invoice financing

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⚬Real-time trade settlement on one platform for all parties

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⚬Bank payment undertaking (BPU)

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⚬Track and trace for over 426 countries

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⚬Identification of unknown counterparties i.e. all clients on

we.trade platform are KYC’d

– Website: https://we-trade.com

– Technology used: IBM Blockchain platform (Hyperledger fabric)

Insurance

In simple terms, insurance is a contract between an individual/business and

an insurance company against unforeseen risks. Individuals/businesses buy

an insurance policy to protect themselves against a risk under a contract to

get reimbursement as defined in the insurance policy in case risks actually

occur. Insurance company pools the client or customer risks to make the

insurance policy premium affordable.

There are multiple types of insurance policies:

• Life insurance

• Home insurance (buildings and content insurances)

• Automobile insurance

• And many more

Blockchain footprint

• Ryskex: Ryskex is a technology company providing a blockchain-based

platform to insurance companies to assess and handle risks accurately.

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⚬Website: https://ryskex.com

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⚬Technology used: Consensys Quorum Blockchain