Microsoft (MSFT, -0.27%) is working with Israel’s Bank Hapoalim on a system that uses blockchain technology to manage digital bank guarantees.
Bank guarantees are essential in sectors such as real estate, where they represent security for tenants’ leases, or where companies need to demonstrate that they can pay for expensive goods.
However, bank guarantees can get mislaid, and some find the process of handling them to be too laborious and slow. Which is why technology companies are now promising a solution in the blockchain—the same sort of shared-ledger technology that underpins bitcoin.
