Tramonex Labs To Use Smart Contracts for Cross-Currency Money Transfer
Regulators are waking up to the potential of blockchain, just in time for the rise of smart contracts.
Tramonex Labs, a London-based fintech, has announced today that it has been granted a registration as a Small Electronic Money Institution with the Bank of England Financial Services Register, or FCA. The company has been registered with the FCA as an Authorised Payment Institution since 2014, but is only now clear to issue electronic money.
This registration will allow the company to issue electronic money on the blockchain—well, partially. The license is restricted, and allows Tramonex Labs to conduct a test pilot for the transfer of “e-money” across its platform — a test that will be run across smart contracts.
Smart contracts first emerged on Ethereum, and could be thought of as a simple form of artificial intelligence: they enable cause and effect on the blockchain, allowing the automation of money transfers and other services through self-executing code.
The test pilot will be conducted in tandem with fellow United Kingdom startup alice.si, a company applying the potential of blockchain (and smart contracts) to charity.
The company aims to facilitate greater trust between donors and charities by holding every donation in smart contracts, an act that enables greater transparency for the donors, as well as creating a more trustworthy method of donating for the charities.
The upcoming pilot will test out the use of smart contracts for money transfer—specifically, donation transfers—by having “donors” send funds to a Tramonex Labs account, where the smart contract should then automate the amount of “e-money” sent to the charity.
In 2016, Tramonex Labs received a £250,000 grant from Innovate UK for the development of its cross-currency payments system. For the company, tests in a regulated environment are the next step forward to enable automated payments.
To learn more about smart contracts, join us in San Jose on March 6-7 for Bank Innovation 2017, where the best conversations in fintech take place. Click here to register.
