South Korea’s largest and most influential foreign exchange bank, Korea Exchange Bank (or KEB Hana Bank), has applied for 46 blockchain-related patents for methods and systems in electronic contracts, purchasing overseas products, and providing digital asset services (Feb 13).

Part of the Hana Financial Group, KEB Hana Bank is also working on a blockchain-based Internet banking service that can authorize and distribute IOUs, or debt charters, reported business technology news portal ZDNet (Feb 13).

A vice president at the bank Han Jun-Seong said, “The patent applications are not just about applying blockchain technology into the banking [system]. It is important to connect the new business models and the bank’s internal system through a blockchain.”

Cointelegraph noted (Feb 13) that banks are amongst the institutions that have been filing the most number of blockchain patents. Bank of America is dominating the patent battleground with over 50 applications by the fall of 2018.