Telenor Microfinance Bank (TMB) revealed it will offer remittances between Pakistan and Malaysia using blockchain technology from Ant Financial, a move the company said would improve the security and speed of transactions.

The service will be launched in partnership with Telenor’s Malaysia-based finance business Valyou and was developed to deliver real-time money transfers between the two countries at a lower cost than traditional methods.

Use of blockchain, TMB and Ant Financial added, increases security and opens the ability to closely track the progress of transactions.

The move come two months after authorities cleared Ant Financial to acquire a 45 per cent stake in TMB. A key element of the $184.5 million deal was that Ant Financial would share its technology with the company.

In a statement, State Bank of Pakistan governor Tariq Bajwa said: “This puts Pakistan on the map of very few countries in the world that have launched international remittance using blockchain technology. At around $20 billion per year, international remittances are important from the perspective of overall macroeconomic stability and their positive spill over in improving lives of millions of families.”

Ant Financial has been one of the leading advocates of the use of blockchain for secure cross-border remittances and claimed a world first in the technology with a deployment in the Philippines in June 2018.