Bank of America’s Crypto Patent Move

Bank of America?s Crypto Patent Move

In just a few years, the world?s second largest bank has accumulated more blockchain patents than any other financial entity. Under tech and operations chief Cathy Bessant, BofA is positioning itself for a future dominated by cryptocurrency.

Bank of America’s Crypto Patent Move, the US Patent and Trademark Office published a new BofA patent that focuses on using the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies to send money between accounts. Dubbed “Wire Transfers Using Cryptocurrency,” the patent outlines a system that could help to speed up transfers, make them more reliable, and reduce the amount of customer data sent to third-party clearinghouses like SWIFT for cross-border transactions.

The patent also outlines a crypto storage system that would allow enterprises to keep their digital currencies in one central location and avoid the risks associated with sharing records via email attachments, which are sensitive to tampering. Instead, the system described in the patent uses a “cryptocurrency-based blockchain-based transaction record” to securely store records and only grant access to authorized parties.

Bank of America’s New Crypto Patent and What It Means for the Industry

As CCN notes, the patent was filed in 2014 and hints at enterprise use cases for cryptocurrencies as the technology matures. It describes a system that includes memory (to store the accounts of both customers and businesses) and a processor to handle crypto deposits across coins like “Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ripple [XRP], Peercoin or Dogecoin” and identify public keys to match them with the relevant account. The processor also harnesses the public key of a business to aggregate the crypto in an enterprise account.