MonetaGo is transitioning from blockchain technology to a cloud-based model after nearly ten years of utilizing distributed ledger technology for its trade finance fraud prevention solutions.
The company highlights several key factors behind this decision, including scalability, adoption challenges, a lack of in-house expertise, varying international regulatory environments, and the maturity of available technology.
MonetaGo’s Secure Financing platform allows financial institutions to verify the authenticity of various documents—such as invoices, bills of lading, warehouse receipts, and purchase orders—prior to financing them.
Initially launched on Fabric and later adapted for R3’s Corda platform, MonetaGo experienced some success with blockchain technology, including collaborations with the international banking network Swift. However, the company has begun to question the practicality of blockchain for larger-scale technology initiatives, noting that banks are becoming more comfortable with APIs and the major cloud service providers, rendering the complex transition to blockchain unnecessary.
“The shift to the cloud simplifies processes while maintaining data privacy and providing the same assurances to financial institutions,” states the company.
MonetaGo’s change in direction comes in the wake of we.trade’s insolvency, a bank-backed blockchain initiative in trade finance that struggled to meet its initial expectations, largely due to scalability challenges.