WASHINGTON—CUNA plans to introduce a CU distributed shared ledger platform—or blockchain at its America's Credit Union Conference in Seattle next week.
The trade association said that in partnership with the Mountain West Credit Union Association it has worked to develop a concept for a credit union system-wide "permissioned distributed shared ledger," commonly referred to as a blockchain.
“Credit unions are the original financial services disrupters. And they are the original cooperative cooperators. Those two essential traits of their DNA make them the perfect business model to shake up financial services again by moving squarely into the innovative blockchain or shared ledger model of transactions,” CUNA said.
CUNA Chief Operating Officer Rich Meade will address the shared ledger during his presentation at the meeting.
CUNA stated that it and the MWCUA “want to develop a blockchain technology platform for credit unions, which will, in turn, provide the system with maximized efficiency and enhance credit unions' strong focus on their members.”
Already, CUNA and the league are pointing interested parties to the website, culedger.com, as a resource that will continue to be built out as the overall project progresses.
"Credit unions have excelled for years living the '7 Principles of Cooperatives,' and one, 'Cooperation among cooperatives,' is totally relevant to today's conversation about blockchain payments technology,” said Meade. “As we have done with shared branching, cooperative ATM networks and so much more, we can now support one another in this forward-facing development.”
CUNA stated that credit unions and their members would benefit in a number of ways from a dedicated shared-ledger platform, including:
- Participation in a credit union industry-specific payments system and not be dependent on others
- Enjoy enhanced security of data for possible financial and identity applications
- Harness the power of the credit union industry and create advanced technology for its own benefit.