Tech giant IBM has launched a pilot of a blockchain platform aimed at streamlining the bank guarantee process.

In a press release shared with Cointelegraph on July 3, IBM stated that the pilot was launched in partnership with four Australian financial services companies.

The pilot, called Lygon, is backed by IBM, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd, Commonwealth Bank, property operator Scentre Group and Australia's first bank Westpac. Starting from the 4th, the pilot group’s retail property leasing customers will have a trial run for eight weeks.

Essentially, Lygon is a blockchain-based platform that digitizes the issuance and management of bank guarantees in the retail property leasing sector. According to the release, digitizing processes will reduce the risk of fraud, reduce potential errors, and increase transparency and security.

Once the pilot is complete, Lygon plans to expand the range of digital bank guarantees it supports and start offering these guarantees to other industries. Didier Van Not, general manager of corporate and institutional banking at Westpac, said: “We have created a blockchain-based platform to digitize the bank guarantee ecosystem. The pilot will use The distributed ledger is being tested on real-time transactions to prove that the technology is commercially viable. This is a great example of digital transformation that IBM has launched so far. Developed many enterprise blockchain products. Last month, Brazilian bank and financial infrastructure service provider CIP officially launched a blockchain ID platform using Hyperledger Fabric in partnership with IBM. Its goal is to verify digital signatures using mobile devices.

In March this year, five Japanese banks collaborated to launch a financial services infrastructure based on IBM's distributed ledger technology.