BlockChain Platforms in Financial Services: Current Perspective

Background: BlockChain technology was invented to support bitcoin, currently the most popular virtual currency. Objectives: The purpose of this paper is to investigate contemporary BlockChain platforms in financial services. Methods/Approach: An unstructured literature review has been used. Results: BlockChain in financial services is mostly associated with bitcoin exchange. However, this is a partial view of both BlockChain technology and its possible adoption for financial services: in fact, many BlockChain platforms are now available and many different financial services can be effectively supported by BlockChain platforms, even though they are not based on virtual-money exchange. Furthermore, people are attracted by the concept of smart contract, i.e., a contract that is automatically executed by computer technology, without human intervention. Conclusions: The contribution of this paper is twofold: first of all, we introduce the four BlockChain platforms that are now most popular, discussing how they support the smart contract concept; second, we identify some typical categories of financial services, matching each of them with the platform that provides the best support for each category.