The Blockchain Trade Finance Platform, spearheaded by the Digital Currency Research Lab of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), has recently been approved as a key special project of the National Key Research And Development Program with grants of 32.35 million yuan.

According to Beijing-based financial news outlet Caixin, the trade finance project has the strongest and highest level of national support in terms of blockchain projects within the country. The total funding for the platform is 32.35 million yuan ($4.7 million) with an implementation period of three years.

The project is led by the Digital Currency Research Lab of the People Bank of China. Other major institutions include Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, Renmin University, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Credit Reference Center of The People’s Bank of China, Beijing Financial Assets Exchange, and Dongfang Port under the General Administration of Customs also participated and assisted with its development.

The program, with more policy and fund support, is aimed to pool more resources to build an open and shared trade and finance ecology relying on the trade finance platform. It is learned that the PBoC-backed trade finance platform has been connected with the Hong Kong Trade Finance Platform in-depth in terms of technical details. In addition, according to PBoC’s Shenzhen branch, the PBoC trade finance platform is also talking about cooperation with the Singapore national trading platform.

In the future, the platform will focus on serving the real economy and helping small- and medium-sized businesses reduce the cost of trade financing. It will further connect similar platforms from more countries and international organizations to form a global trade financing highway with extensive connections, and is expected to become the world’s largest regional trade finance platform powered by blockchain.

As previously reported, the blockchain trade finance solution of the PBoC has processed over 90 billion yuan ($13.12 billion) in blockchain-supported businesses after over one-year long run.