Brokerages in South Korea have commercialized blockchain technology to build a more secured infrastructure to benefit both users and the firms, according to the Korea Financial Investment Association Tuesday.

This marked the first time in the world that financial investment firms have offered customers a decentralized platform for authentication, Kofia Chairman Hwang Young-key said in an opening speech.

Through the service dubbed “Chain ID,” based on the Kofia-led consortium’s own private blockchain platform and smart contract technology, customers will be able to perform user authentication through their smartphones without a separate firm to ensure the customer protection.

The service of blockchain-based security platform is or will be available in 11 local securities firms out of 56 in Korea. If a customer goes through a blockchain-backed user authentication in one of the firms, the customer would not need to repeat the process in the other firms.

The new-era “internet of value” would allow Korea’s financial investment sector to keep pace with “rapidly unfolding digital disruption,” said Hwang, quoting Canadian blockchain pundit Don Tapscott.

Hwang also stressed during the conference that blockchain is key to improving infrastructure security and risk management, while cutting costs, in the financial industry as a whole.

The Kofia-led consortium, launched in October 2016, is composed of 26 firms in the financial investment sector and five companies devoted to blockchain technology.

By Son Ji-hyoung
(consnow@heraldcorp.com)