BlockChain Platforms in Financial Services: Current Perspective

Abstract

BlockChain technology was invented to support bitcoin, currently the most popular virtual currency. The purpose of this paper is to investigate contemporary BlockChain platforms in financial services. An unstructured literature review has been used. BlockChain in financial services is mostly associated with bitcoin exchange. However, this is a partial view of both BlockChain technology and its possible adoption for financial services: In fact, many BlockChain platforms are now available and many different financial services can be effectively supported by BlockChain platforms, even though they are not based on virtual-money exchange. Furthermore, people are attracted by the concept of smart contract, i.e., a contract that is automatically executed by computer technology, without human intervention. The contribution of this paper is twofold: First of all, we introduce the four BlockChain platforms that are now most popular, discussing how they support the smart contract concept; second, we identify some typical categories of financial services, matching each of them with the platform that provides the best support for each category.