So much so that 15% of banks world wide expect to widely implement blockchain, which is a ledger of transactions updated in real time by various institutions, by next year, according to the report which surveyed 200 global banks.

These banks, mostly medium to large-sized institutions, are focusing their blockchain technology on three areas: consumer lending, retail payments, and reference data, which refers to the real-time information sharing of transactions across business divisions and institutions.

In four years, IBM says that 66% percent of banks expect to have blockchain in commercial production and at scale.