About
With an objective of eliminating manual reconciliation, dependency on financial intermediary and brokers and transit time to physical LC advising, ICICI Bank has introduced e-DS which is a Marquee solution developed using Blockchain architecture. This industry-first initiative has the capability to disrupt inland bill discounting transactions in India by bringing together the nuances of trade, government initiatives & power of blockchain. This platform is a one-stop solution that provides all functions of LC (view, review, download) thus enabling the client to reduce dependence on paper.
Innovation presentation
e-DS is powered by DLT based blockchain technology which aims at re-defining & digitally transforming the Domestic Supply Chain Ecosystem. It enables real time digital flow of LCs, facilitates API enabled digital presentation & drawdown requests from customer’s ERP resulting in improved liquidity & working capital efficiency.
The solution virtually connects enterprises across the value chain on a single platform interface & provides faster processing through multi-channel integration & leverages the transparency, integration & immutability of blockchain to add value to all stakeholders. The technology architecture of e-DS enables advising of LCs from any bank in India to the client electronically, eliminating existing paper trail. Clients can view, review & download the LCs. Post shipment, documents can be submitted electronically on the platform. AI / ML technology facilitates data extraction from LCs, simplifying customer journey and reducing data entry.
Uniqueness of the project
With an objective to decongest processes at the bank’s end with digitization, automation, minimum manual validation & processing, e-DS is one of the transformative milestones at ICICI.
e-DS allows clients to seek & confirm bill discounting rates at the time of LC receipt itself – avoiding to and fro email communication with immutable audit trails for all parties. It has improved user experience with the following functionalities:
• Lowered dependence on brokers through dynamic bidding for LC discounting quotes.
• Digital LC advising to reduce transit time for receiving paper LC
• Digital presentation of documents to reduce branch dependency
• Customisable plug & play reports eliminating manual reconciliation of bills
