Banks, Intel signal blockchain interest with $107m R3 investment
Major banks, including HSBC and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and Intel are among dozens of organisations that have invested $107m into the R3 group. R3 is a consortium of banks working to build distributed ledger technology for financial services. The $107m funding round marks the first two of a three-tranche financing process. Other top-tier investors included SBI Group and Temasek, while Goldman Sachs and Santander have quit the funding round and left R3. The group wants to use blockchain to reduce costs and speed up transaction processing, and is developing Corda, an open source distributed ledger platform.

Intel , Bank of America Merrill Lynch , HSBC and dozens of other institutions have invested $107 million into R3, a group developing blockchain-like technology for financial companies. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs and Santander walked away from the funding round and left the R3 group, a source close to the situation told CNBC. R3 is a group of major banks that are working together to bring so-called distributed ledger technology to their processes. It's based on blockchain – the technology that underpins the cryptocurrency bitcoin. Blockchain technology allows transactions on the bitcoin network to be recorded and not tampered with.

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Banks are trying to apply this same principle to many of their processes from asset trading to money transfers. The promise is that distributed ledger technology can drive down costs and increase the speed of several transactions. The $107 million funding round for R3 marks the first two tranches of a three tranche financing process, with the final installment likely to be raised later this year. R3 members could all get a piece of the action with three tiers of investment available. The first tier was open to all investors. The second tier required investors to put in more money but gave them governance responsibilities such as sitting on certain committees. The third tier meant investors had to put a larger sum in but got a board seat. SBI Group, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, HSBC, Intel and Temasek, were among the top tier investors. . R3 said the money would be used to develop and implement its key product known as Corda, which is an open source distributed ledger platform.

Intel employees walk by a sign as they enter their office in Santa Clara, California. Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

"You are going to begin to see the roll out of the enterprise grade Corda platform. You will see the beginning of the network standing up – connecting investors and members on nodes on the software," Charley Cooper, managing director of R3, told CNBC in a phone interview ahead of the funding announcement. "What is of more interest is that we are partnering with various different companies around the world to build applications to be sold to the world for real world applications that will be out by the end of the year."