Citi Increases its Equity Interest in Trade Financing Platform Komgo

Citi (NYSE:C) has raised its equity stake in komgo, an Ethereum-based trading platform founded by Citi. The financial services company also started integrating its trade handling system with komgo’s blockchain.

Komgo, a project that was rolled out in 2018 collaboratively with ConsenSys, is an efficient platform for trade financing in the commodities market. It allows traders who buy and sell equities to leverage distributed ledger technology (DLT) to contact each other, and their respective banks.

Komgo is also backed by several other investors, such as Societe Generale, ING Group, and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation.

Global Head of Commodity Trade Finance at Citibank, Kris van Broekhoven, held a discussion with ConsenSys, talking about the bank’s reasons for backing the blockchain project.

He said komgo is different from other blockchain projects because it’s supported by notable banks and companies.

Broekhoven said that Citi, one of the founders of the trading platform, recently "topped up [its] equity to allow the company to continue developing."

The bank also started integrating its own trade processing system with komgo, to benefit from lower turnaround times and other of the platform’s features. Moreover, since komgo’s security system has been developed further, the bank is starting to monitor their investment expenses to ensure the platform’s financial capacities.

Komgo is currently focusing on letters of credit, account receivables funding, as well as KYC. However, it is expected that komgo will include new features in the future, such as inventory financing and auto-matching of electronic records, said Broekhoven.