Global banking giant HSBC has harnessed distributed ledger technology (DLT) to settle over $250 billion worth of foreign exchange (FX) transactions. Financial Times on Monday (Jan 14).

Financial Times (FT) said that HSBC revealed in a press statement that 3 million FX transactions translating into 150,000 payments have been completed through its proprietary blockchain platform dubbed “FX Everywhere” since it started in February 2018. The DLT platform has primarily been used “to orchestrate payments across HSBC’s internal balance sheets” for the last year.

While $250 billion might represent just a “small” portion of the bank’s overall trading volume, DLT has allowed HSBC to “conduct thousands of foreign exchange transactions within the bank, across multiple balance sheets, in dozens of countries,” FT quoted Richard Bibbey, its acting global head of currencies, as saying.

The traditional banking sector in general, however, has been mixed on whether it should adopt blockchain technology.

In addition, Craig Ramsey – HSBC’s own Global Innovation Lead for Global Liquidity & Cash Management – had told audiences at October’s Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas that both blockchain and cryptocurrency pose a “real challenge” to interbank settlements.