GM Financial Collaborates With Blockchain Startup Spring Labs To Launch Blockchain-based Products

It’s almost two months into the year 2019 and one thing is already obvious: blockchain technology is going to make a lot of progress on the developmental front this year. Many companies are entering into blockchain partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions. Recently, the financial arm of General Motors, GM Financial, announced that it is now in a partnership with Spring Labs, a blockchain startup that was able to raise $15 million last year during a funding round.

GM Financial And Spring Labs Team Up

The auto lender, GM Financial, will work with Spring Labs to develop products based on blockchain technology. The company announced that the first line of these products will be available this year. The CEO of Spring Labs, Adam Jiwan, in an interview with Forbes, said that the partnership was initiated because they believed it would be beneficial. In his words:

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“We entered into this partnership because we believed we could develop many use cases that are in line with the primary business priorities of GM Financial and even some use cases that are in line with the vision of the parent company, GM.”

Mike Kanarios, the Chief Strategy Officer of GM Financial, believes that the collaboration with Spring Labs is just what they need to continue exploring blockchain technology. In his words:

“We believe that Spring Labs has the best momentum in the blockchain space.”

Spring Labs is currently working on a protocol that will allow companies to exchange and verify confidential information securely. This platform will be useful to institutions that provide lending services and those that don’t. They will be able to share customer information while keeping privacy intact. This would also make it easy for companies to identify fraudulent actors.

Kanarios believes that the Spring Labs platform may help GM Financial fish out bad actors who commit synthetic identity fraud that costs the lender millions of dollars every year. The blockchain-based system for identity management isn’t just going to be more accurate than traditional systems: it’s also going to be cheaper and faster. Kanarios stated that the protocol isn’t just going to be useful in the automobile industry. It can be used by other lenders in many other industries. However, its use case in the automobile industry extends beyond lending. In the future, it may be used to create a better payment system and host registries.

Blockchain Technology Must Cross Some Hurdles To Achieve Mass Adoption In Any Industry

As good as the narrative sounds, a lot of work still needs to be done to make the vision of massive adoption a reality. Firms across various industries need to find ways to implement blockchain technology in ways that comply with regulations and protect customer privacy while it scales accurately.

Kanarios noted that blockchain technology has potential but it isn’t ideal for every industry. In his words:

“Implementing a new technology will always have its challenges but this is one of those things that we wanted to get on top of so that we could take full advantage of the technology.”

Keep in mind that this isn’t the first time GM Financial is showing interest in blockchain technology. In 2017, GM joined the Hyperledger consortium. Hyperledger is a group dedicated to the development and promotion of blockchain technology across industries.

Do you think this partnership between GM Financial and Spring Labs will be a game changer for the lender? Share your opinion in the comment section.

Max writes about blockchain projects and regulation with a special focus on United States and China. He joined Smarterum after years of writing for various media outlets.

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