French bank rolls out blockchain for ID verification

French bank Crédit Mutuel Arkéa will use blockchain technology to deliver quicker and more cost effective verification of customer identity following a successful pilot.

The project tested a solution to ease the repetitive and labour intensive processes needed to satisfy 'know your customer' regulatory requirements for banks and financial institutions in France.

CMA worked with IBM to develop an operational blockchain network that can only be accessed by members who have the approprate permissions, providing a transparent yet confidential way to verify customer identities.

The financial institution's chief operating officer Frédéric Laurent said the project was the first of its kind in France and offered a complete view of customer documents across CMA's distributed network.

Laurent said the customer identity verification blockchain had helped CMA to master the technology, and the bank was now ready to incorporate it throughout its businesses to speed up day to day tasks such as account opening and mortgage applications.

IBM used the open source HyperLedger project fabric for the CMA project, which runs on the company's Bluemix cloud platform.

Crédit Mutuel Arkéa comprises three regional French financial cooperatives, with 3.6 million customer shareholders and €110 billion (A$164 billion) in total assets.

Blockchain is a distributed transaction ledger derived from the Bitcoin crypto currency. It has recently found favour with banks and other financial institutions as a way to create a transparent and efficient chain of trust with lowered costs.