Standard Bank Group — Africa's largest depository financial institution by assets — has partnered with enterprise-class distributed ledger technology project Hedera Hashgraph.

According to a joint announcement, the African banking behemothic now joins other major corporations like Google, LG, and IBM equally a member of the Hedera Governing Quango.

Standard Banking company will also become a Hedera node operator, the first in Africa with a focus on utilizing DLT to ease bottlenecks in cross-border trade on the continent.

Across Africa, innovations in domestic payment rails have created faster and efficient transaction systems. Even so, this advancement is however to translate to the cross-border payment transaction scene with stablecoins already identified as having the potential to solve these issues.

For Ian Putter, head of DLT and blockchain at Standard Banking concern Group, the partnership with Hedera is function of the banking company's focus on utilizing decentralized technology to ameliorate cross-border trade in Africa.

Doodle told Cointelegraph that the bank views DLT every bit a feasible base-layer for supporting cross-border in Africa and also connect the continent to partners in major markets similar China, adding:

"We have completed [proofs of concept] have solutions in product and are partnering with these parties to calibration and exploit these cantankerous-edge trade solutions. A key focus for us is to continue exploration and experimentation with this technology as it apace evolves, through partnerships and leveraging existing solutions to speed up implementation and scaling."

Putter highlighted the growing interest in central banking concern digital currencies, or CBDCs, as a pointer to the potential for DLT-based technology to disrupt the global business process.

According to Hedera CEO Mance Harmon, Africa is poised to occupy a leading office in DLT utilization, telling Cointelegraph:

"With services like M-Pesa already widely used, we encounter a willingness for African companies to embrace new technologies like blockchain and distributed ledger applied science to see the changing needs of their customers. In addition to financial services/DeFi, we also see potent interest from companies in the region in leveraging DLT for use cases in healthcare, free energy management, identity, and supply chains."