The striking aspect of Celent’s 2018 Model Bank award winners is the number that are applying technology that would have been considered akin to moonshot ten years ago. In the process, they are embracing paradigms that would have been inconceivable.

Several winners are applying blockchain-based technology only nine years after the revolutionary, polemical concept of Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, was born. They are solving critical pain points in a variety of use cases, including cross-border payments and trade finance. Their initiatives are being propelled by the rocket of enterprise blockchain.