Standard Chartered Backs China’s Linklogis

British bank Standard Chartered is investing an undisclosed amount in China’s supply chain platform Linklogis, earning an equity stake, and further enhancing its ongoing partnership, Standard Chartered announced.

“Corporate clients globally are increasingly looking for efficient and secure digital platforms to meet their supply chain financing needs. Our strategic investment into Linklogis not only allows us to better serve our clients by being a part of their integrated ecosystem; it also reinforces our efforts to support China’s opening by facilitating the flow of capital, particularly for the Greater Bay Area,” said Benjamin Hung, regional CEO for Greater China and North Asia at Standard Chartered.

This is the bank’s first investment in a Chinese supply chain, which will support Linklogis’ joint supply chain network scheme, allowing suppliers to tap economical and accessible financing. 

“Providing deep-tier supply chain financing is a key priority in our strategy to support our clients’ entire sales and distribution network. To that end, we are excited to deepen our partnership with Linklogis, [which] shares our commitment in helping businesses around the world create healthy and sustainable supply chains by banking their suppliers and distributors,”  said Simon Cooper, CEO of corporate, commercial and institutional banking at Standard Chartered. 

This investment also marks the first time a global bank has invested in Linklogis. Standard Chartered’s partnership with Linklogis started in February 2019 with a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to work together, and offer a supply chain financing proposition. Standard Chartered plans to harness Linklogis’ knowledge to offer big buyers transparency into suppliers, as well as simple, affordable credit. 

“We are much delighted with the deepening of partnership with Standard Chartered, which shall invariably complement each other’s effort in the offering of supply chain financing solutions to the suppliers’ ecosystem. It has always been the strategic goal of Linklogis to develop [an] innovative, tech-enabled supply chain financing platform for the betterment of market efficiency, and in support of real economy,” said Charles Song, chairman and CEO of Linklogis.

In November, Standard Chartered announced that it was the latest financial institution to join the consortium Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), a standards organization focused on developing open blockchain specifications.