Citibank Ruth Wandhofer researching Cross Border Payment solutions using Blockchain

During Finnovate Event in Dubai held this last February, UNLOCK met with Ruth Wandhofer, Managing Director, Global Head of Regulatory and Market Strategy, at Citi Bank. Ruth discussed how the new foundational technologies such as DLT (Distributed Ledger Technologies) have the potential to change the way we do business. According to Wandhofer, “the emergence of crypto currency ecosystem requires some regulatory response but beyond this it will become more stable well balanced creating less stress for both regulators and investors.”

She adds, “We are in an era of a lot of regulations therefore banks have no choice but to automate process and take the burden off, turning the data they have into assets. The GDPR regulation is impacting companies around the word turning unstructured data into structured intelligent data which will then create economic value.”

When it comes to Blockchain Wandhofer explains that one of the first Blockchain implementations for Citibank was the CitiBank and Nasdaq Blockchain solution. She explained, “We created an integrated payment solution that enables straight through payment processing and automated reconciliation using DLT. The solution tightly integrates Blockchain technology with CitiBank global financial network leveraging API technology.” The solution was built by Blockchain solution provider Chain.

As for the future Wandhofer is currently working on a research paper for cross border payments using Blockchain. As she explains, “After the research paper is completed we will request proposals.”