Financial services giant Deloitte announced today the opening of their new blockchain center in Dublin, Ireland. The EMEA Financial Services Blockchain Lab will be staffed with 50 developers, which the company says will be recruited over the next 18 months.

The press release

revealed that the developer team at the new laboratory will be designing various blockchain-based prototypes, which Deloitte says will “become ‘ready to integrate’ offerings for financial services clients.”

The launch of the Dublin lab is only the first step in Deloitte’s global strategy known as “The Grid”, where other such centers are planned in fintech hotspots around the world, “I think we’re unique at this point but I’d expect that to grow globally. In fact that’s our plan.” said David Dalton, in an interview with CoinDesk.

Dalton – who co-heads the EMEA lab, as well as being head of financial services at Deloitte Ireland – explained that the Dublin center will source some of its talent from existing blockchain experts at Deloitte, while the company tries to attract additional talent from the industry.

He also said that blockchains are applicable in many industries and that the level of current demand warrants the investments being made by Deloitte:

“There is significant demand from clients who are looking to use blockchain to speed up payments and transfer clearances, settlements, reconciliations and digital identity, and many other use cases.”

Deloitte chose Ireland due to its fintech-friendly atmosphere. Last month, the Bank of Ireland revealed its interest in blockchain technology by partnering with Deloitte on a financial transactions monitoring platform, which interfaces with the legacy financial system, instead of replacing it.

Deloitte has made other significant partnerships and investments in the blockchain space this year. At the beginning of May, the company revealed

collaborations with five prominent blockchain and digital currency startups, during the Consensus 2016 fintech conference in New York.

 

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