15th April Ganzhou-The throughput of blockchain-based bank billing system has reached 30 million RMB since the first transaction was completed one month ago. Ganzhou Bank is a local bank based in Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province. However, the report doesn’t disclose specifics about the bottom layer platform for the system.

Control room of blockchain billing system in Gangzhou Bank (photo credit: newskj.com)

On 15th March, the national blockchain-based billing system was deployed in Ganzhou Bank. The system has attracted attention from medium, small and micro size enterprises (MSME). According to the MSME definition (section 16): companies with employees between 100 to 300 people are medium size. Small company has 100 to 10 employees and micro one has less than 10 employees. According to a report released in 2016, China’s MSMEs accounted for 99.7% of the total number of enterprises, among which 97.3% are small and micro enterprises. The MSMEs provide large amount of jobs and is the source of vitality and growth in the economy. However, the small companies are biased when they try to get proper loans from banks for a variety of reason.

As of 14th April, 17 branches of Gangzhou Bank has completed 60 loans for 30 MSMEs with total amount of 34.0214 million yuan. The news report doesn’t give details of the blockchain platform. The low interest rate of these loans is where the value of blockchain is derived. As per the report, the average interest rate of these 60 loans is 5.18%, which is a huge saving for the clients. The loaning period varies from 17 days to 6 months, which indicates that these companies could quickly return their debts.

Compared to other national banks, Ganzhou Bank is a regional bank that is very small in terms of business scale. Such banks are usually transformed from local urban credit cooperatives. In recent years, these banks were allowed to set up branches in other cities or province. The adoption of blockchain technology might help these regional banks to gain more ground from the traditional big banks.