One of the leading consulting services companies has developed a new platform that will enable digital assets to be used for a range of services, including everyday commerce, banking, and other personal currency and asset related services.
PwC has launched a new financial technology capability to facilitate the use of virtual assets. Called Vulcan Digial Asset Services, the system will offer investment services, international payment processing, and virtual currency wallets.
Vulcan has been developed in partnership with blockchain startup Netki, a provider of compliance, audit, and integration solutions for blockchain technology Libra, and enterprise blockchain solutions provider Bloq.
PwC will provide innovative fintech companies with an access to its customer base and enable them to co-create new products. In addition, PwC plans to offer point-of-sale and merchant services, as well as the ability to create and support native digital currencies and rewards based systems.
Robert Allen, PwC Director and Vulcan Lead, commented: “Vulcan is a cloud-based platform that enables banks and corporates to offer a suite of new digital currency related products and services to individual, retail and institutional customers within a trusted, transparent and compliant ecosystem. It is the first of its kind globally and has been created to bring digital assets and currency to the mainstream.”
“We’ve created Vulcan because at PwC we believe new technology supported by advances in cryptography and network computing – particularly blockchain – will transform the consumer, government and financial market industries and shape the next generation of money,” he added.
Meantime, PwC’s Fintech Asia Leader, John Shipman, said: “Traditional financial services companies have taken a cautious approach to digital currencies because of the perceived issues with trust and transparency. Vulcan came about because we were looking at these issues in relation to Bitcoin – the poster child of digital money – and in particular, how we can solve challenges relating to the issues of anonymity, and existing regulatory requirements, and recourse given its cross-border nature, function as a store of value and lack of central control.”
The pilot of the platform has already been launched by a central bank and an international banking group. Besides, it is being tested by an airline and multinational banking organizations.
“We’re already running several pilots within multiple industries looking at capturing digitised assets within our trusted wallets as well as issuing customer reward points as digital money,” Shipman stated.
As he also noted, PwC is collaborating with governments to see how the services can improve transparency within humanitarian aid programs.
“Blockchain-enabled business will be multi-network, multi-chain and multi-token,” said Jeff Garzik, Bloq’s CEO. “Companies exploring blockchain technology need flexible, tailored systems. By partnering with Vulcan, we’re providing an avenue for even the largest of enterprises to be agile during this next wave of innovation.”
Many of the world’s companies have already recognized the benefits of the blockchain technology. Earlier this month, PwC expert, Seamus Cushley, claimed financial organizations see a huge potential in the distributed ledger technology. Cushley said $1.4 billion has been invested in blockchain startups over the last nine months.
Moreover, PwC’s earlier report unveiled that the financial industry players feel the most pressure from fintech startups. For instance, banks expect that 24% of their market share will be lost to fintech companies.
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