Standard Chartered and Huawei are developing an Internet of Things (IoT) powered solution that could redefine the way corporates communicate with banks for financing or payments.

Rather than corporates having to manually initiate these transactions through paper-based or emailed instructions, the new solution intends to allow corporates and banks to 'speak' to each other in real-time, triggering financing or payment instructions through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

The proposed solution combines IoT and cloud capabilities, so the bank will be able to track the movement of goods on a real-time basis, reducing operational risks and providing reliable data that can be used in financing decisions. Availability of real-time data enables straight-through processing for a wider class of use cases and can significantly reduce turn-around times, opening up possibilities for a broader range of financing solutions for manufacturers and their distributors.

The IoT solution uses Huawei's OceanConnect, an open platform built on IoT, cloud computing, and Big Data technologies. With a cloud-based unified IoT device management capability as its core, it links up with connected devices and collects real-time data through a series of agents while providing user-friendly open APIs to application developers to design and orchestrate the business process.

Commenting on the partnership with Huawei, Dr Michael Gorriz, Group CIO of Standard Chartered, says: "Technology can change the fundamental way we do banking. We found in Huawei a strong partner who shares our passion to transform the way we would like to support our clients and make banking seamless and effortless for them through the application of cutting-edge Internet of Things technology."

Qiu Lei, vice president of marketing and product solution sales of Huawei Enterprise Business Group, says: "It is Huawei's mission to help create a fully connected, intelligent world as more industries adopt IoT and embark on their digital transformation journey. In the face of the challenges within the journey, technology is often only part of the solution. Determination and vision are equally critical. We partner with Standard Chartered for their strong determination and great vision from the very top echelon of the company to support their clients when it comes to digital transformation."

He adds: "To better enable innovation and access tech trends and start-ups in North Asia, we opened our eXellerator innovation laboratory in Hong Kong earlier this year, complementing the eXellerator laboratory in Singapore. Our state-of-the-art technology centre in Bangalore, puts us at the heart of the action in the "Silicon Valley of the East".