The number of banks applying for blockchain patents has increased 38 times in 4 years. Weizhong Bank wins the championship with 288 patents.

Source of this article: Securities Daily

Reporter Li Bing

Blockchain ushered in a "strong blast" last year, and banks are also one of its main players.

According to statistics from the Zero One Think Tank, from 2016 to December 2019, a total of 15 banks in China have applied for blockchain technology-related patents, and the total number of patent applications has reached 433, compared with 11 cases 4 years ago. More than a 38-fold increase. The three banks with the largest number of patent applications were Wezhong Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Bank of China, with 288, 50 and 40 patent applications respectively.

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One Wanxin Financial Technology analyst Ren Wansheng told the Securities Daily reporter, "With the popularization of the concept of blockchain and the need for digital transformation of banks, blockchain is decentralized, traceable, non-tamperable, secure and confidential, etc. The characteristics have attracted more and more attention from banks. At the same time, it has attracted some banks to invest time, manpower, and funds to develop the application of blockchain technology in the banking industry. "

4 years bank patent application

38 times the number

"Securities Daily" reporter noted that from the time of patent application, the earliest record of banking financial institutions applying for blockchain patents can be traced back to 2016.

According to the statistics of Zero One Think Tank, from 2016 to 2019, the number of blockchain patents applied by the banking industry has increased from 11 to 433, an increase of nearly 38 times. Specifically, in 2016, only Bank of China and Weizhong Bank applied for blockchain patents, and the number was 7 and 4 respectively. From 2017 to 2019, the total number of patent applications filed by all banks was 43, 95 and 284, respectively.

In 4 years, the number of banks participating in blockchain patent applications has increased from 2 to 15. In this process, the three banks with the largest number of patent applications were Wezhong Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Bank of China.

According to statistics, in 2019 alone, the banking industry applied for 284 blockchain patents, and a total of 9 banks applied for blockchain-related patents, of which Weizhong Bank ranked first with 229, accounting for new additions in 2019. 81% of the total number of patents; ICBC ranked second, with 35 applications in 2019, accounting for 12% of the total; the number of patent applications for the remaining 7 banks was less than 10.

The reporter noticed that Weizhong Bank has a leading position in business distribution due to its quantitative advantage. Its blockchain patents cover digital assets, supply chain financial services, payment settlement services, credit reporting and remittance services. Chain patents cover digital assets, credit services, credit reporting, cross-border payments, fund custody, and foreign exchange settlement and sales. ICBC's blockchain patents are mainly focused on digital assets and supply chain financial services.

Ren Wansheng, a fintech analyst at Zero One Think Tank, said that in order to allow patent examiners to know whether the patent applied for is innovative, practical, and unique, they will often apply patent technology background, business pain points, technical pain points, and solve Methods and specific procedures are written into the patent application.

139 blockchain patents

Related to financial business and application scenarios

Overall, among the blockchain patents applied by banks, 151 blockchain patents are related to infrastructure and underlying technology, and 139 blockchain patents are related to financial business and application scenarios.

"Securities Daily" reporter noted that from the perspective of patent application business, digital assets, credit business and supply chain finance are the three areas that attract the most attention from banks.

Specifically, 5 banks have applied for a total of 17 patents related to digital assets. The banks that applied for them include Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, China Merchants Bank and Weizhong Bank. Four banks have applied for related patents in the credit business. These include Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of Communications, and Yushan Commercial Bank; four banks in the supply chain finance business have applied for related patents, including Industrial and Commercial Bank, Agricultural Bank, Weizhong Bank, and Fujian Rural Credit Bank. In addition, payment settlement, credit reporting, and cross-border payment are also the application scenarios that banks are more concerned about, and they have applied for 3 patent banks in these fields.

According to statistics, in the field of bank blockchain patent application scenarios, the fields of identity authentication, blockchain voting, asset transfer, point management, blockchain source tracing, secret transactions, risk management, and bill processing have received widespread attention from the banking industry.

In addition, in terms of infrastructure and underlying technologies, data processing is the technology that appears most frequently in patent applications. According to incomplete statistics, the number of patent applications related to data processing reached 54. Among them, data processing includes data storage, data reading, data access, data sharing, data detection, data reduction, data synchronization, and other technologies. Second, the number of patents in the three technologies of smart contracts, consensus algorithms, and encryption technologies has appeared in patents. All reached more than 10 pieces.

Ren Wansheng believes that patent applications in the field of cross-border payment are particularly worthy of attention: "Blockchain cross-border payment systems have the following advantages: point-to-point transactions between remittance banks and beneficiary banks, eliminating the time cost and funds caused by correspondent banks Cost, improves the efficiency of cross-border payment between banks; supports 7 * 24 time transactions without being affected by time differences and holidays; can be real-time cancelled through the distributed ledger of the blockchain; supports real-time query of transaction transfer status; can ensure the security of data storage, Prevent the risk of data leakage; promote data sharing and improve work efficiency through the blockchain network. "

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