National Australian Bank (NAB) says it has become the first financial institution to complete an intra-bank cross boarder transaction on a public blockchain.

The pilot transaction on Ethereum blockchain used NAB-issued stablecoin and used smart contracts for seven major global currencies.

NAB says the success of the transaction illustrates the potential to reduce the time of cross-border transactions from days to minutes and will enable clients operating in different geographies and currencies a faster and simpler system.

Commenting on the news Drew Bradford, NAB executive general manager, Markets, said: “Bringing multi-currency stablecoins to market demonstrates NAB’s focus on simplifying international banking protocols to increase speed and transparency while lowering costs and reducing complexity for customers.”

He added: “We believe that elements of the future of finance will be blockchain enabled and we’re already witnessing rapid change in the tokenisation market. The stringent governance frameworks we have in place ensures we can support the creation of a safe and reliable digital financial system.”

NAB’s Australian stablecoin, AUDN, will be fully backed one-for-one with the Australian dollar and managed as a liability of the bank. It has partnered with Blockfold and Fireblocks to build and deploy the stablecoin and manage the direct custody of the digital assets on the blockchain.

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