PwC announces strategic alliance with BitSE

PwC announces strategic alliance with BitSE to accelerate the use of blockchain in Asia Pacific markets.

The two firms will join forces to create a 50-strong team of specialists and provide one-stop, innovative blockchain solutions.

PwC China signed a join business relationship with BitSE – a Shanghai-based blockchain start-up, just like they signed a strategic partnership with Blockstream. With BitSE together, the two firms plan to leverage their respective strengths to bring blockchain technology to the Asia Pacific market through one-stop solutions. Blockchain, or “distributed ledger”, technology has been used for a number of years but rose to prominence along with the explosive rise of Bitcoin in 2013. Blockchain is the technology behind Bitcoin and other virtual currencies.

“Blockchain is a disruptive technology,” said Jim Woods, PwC’s Risk & Regulatory Services Leader for Asia Pacific, at the signing ceremony.

“Just as the Internet has had a revolutionary impact on culture and commerce since it first emerged for wide-scale use in the mid-1990s, Blockchain is going to be similarly transformative. It will change the way business is conducted across many industries, especially Financial Services. In the new world of digital disruption, our clients expect PwC to provide greater trust and confidence around their business model innovation. Our alliance with BitSE will ensure that we supplement PwC’s market leadership position with a deep technical capability to help our clients design and implement innovative blockchain solutions.”

“Blockchain technology has a wide range of potential applications,” said BitSE CEO Qian Dejun.

“More clients will focus on blockchain and start to adopt it in their industries in the near future. PwC has extensive expertise and advisory experience, which will help us to promote these new solutions in the market.”

Blockchain’s distributed ledger technology enables secure transactions between two parties without the need of an intermediary, such as a bank. Some major corporations have developed internal blockchain systems to manage transfers and other payments between different business units. Blockchain is also being used to develop ‘smart contracts’….

PwC China Fintech Partner William Gee said

“Together, we aim to be the first professional services team to enable adoption of blockchain business solutions in Asia Pacific for financial services, governments and other industry clients.”

“Although the market acceptance of blockchain and the pace of R&D has been a bit slower in China than in western countries, we believe that by teaming up with PwC we can speed up research into and the use of blockchain in the Asia Pacific market,” said BitSE CTO Shuai Chu.

“PwC will bring deep industry experience, a broad range of business services and client insights,” CY Cheung, PwC China Fintech Partner, said.

“Through this partnership, we can maximise our expertise, technology and talent to assist our clients to face new competition, adapt to disruptive market forces and lead to innovation.”

PwC and BitSE are working closely with several local financial institutions to explore and develop plans to implement blockchain applications in near future.

About BitSE

BitSE established 2013, focusing on the blockchain field and devoting to the blockchain technology to make innovations in industries. Three founders are from IBM, Alibaba and Louis Vuitton, with products and market experiences. BitSE core R&D team are from nine different countries, and have been developed more than 50,000 rows of codes accumulatively. BitSE is a world leader who firstly brought the concept and philosophy of BaaS (Blockchain-As-A-Service).

In 2014, BITSE focused on digital assets business, participated and leaded many innovation projects in blockchain industry; in 2015, BITSE initiated a research lab for the blockchain and started researching in distributed consensus, DAPP and smart contracts. Apart from the contribution to blockchain technology, BitSE also aims on developing solutions to solve current problems of clients and society, e.g. in 2015, BitSE launched Vechain, a solution to deal with anti-counterfeiting through applying a unique ID to each product / item. In 2016, BitSE is in progress of developing other business solutions, e.g. Quantum (an operation system for blockchain development and running environment), smart contract and private chain.

About PwC – Globally

PwC firms help organisations and individuals create the value they are looking for. We are a network of firms in 157 countries with more than 208,000 people who are committed to delivering quality in assurance, advisory and tax services.

Find out more and tell us what matters to you by visiting us at: http://www.pwc.com/

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Please see http://www.pwc.com/structure/ for further details.

PwC – Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Singapore

PwC China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Singapore work together on a collaborative basis, subject to local applicable laws. Collectively, we have around 760 partners and a strength of over 17,800 people.

Providing organisations with the professional services they need, wherever they may be located, our highly qualified, experienced professionals listen to different points of view to help organisations solve their business issues and identify and maximise the opportunities they seek. Our industry specialisation allows us to help co-create solutions with our clients for their sector of interest.

We are located in these cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Shenyang, Dalian, Xi’an, Chengdu, Qingdao, Nanjing, Suzhou, Wuhan, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Xiamen, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Taipei, Chungli, Hsinchu, Kaohsiung, Taichung, Tainan, Macau and Singapore.

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