Our client is a financial institution - Banco Português de Investimento (BPI), part of Caixa Bank group, looking to expand their offerings into blockchain and specifically into tokenization through NFTs - Non-Fungible Tokens.

The objective was to create a blockchain and NFT tokenization platform and marketplace. The goal was to provide a technological solution enabling non-tech-savvy banks to adopt blockchain, especially tokenize assets, emphasising enabling BPI to manage digital assets such as NFTs and other blockchain-based services.

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We delivered a digital asset tokenisation and management platform with a marketplace on top. It’s essentially a platform that abstracts the complexity of blockchain and translates it to business operations, managing user wallets, payments, and NFTs.

It’s a very complete solution that includes the back-office integration for managing payments and user wallets, and a front-office to facilitate user interactions with the platform, besides all the back-end – where the magic happens! The team also did all the Integration of blockchain services, where the assets were created, managed, handled and secured, the data layers used to store all the assets metadata –IPFS, and for payments, integration with a payment gateway.
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Our main motto was: Develop a tailor-made solution – starting small, but highly scalable.

For that, the team came up with multiple purposes for the approach that made the project unique. For example, using multi-tier architecture, the team built and integrated interfaces, microservices, and blockchain channels, allowing scalable operations across both channels. The fact that the solution was assembled in a serverless mode, leveraging cloud technologies – in this case, AWS - ensured autonomous management of the operations and implementation of all the mechanisms needed to manage the solution, namely CI/CD and observability.

The team tried to focus on the experience, focus on the use case and abstract all the technology components for the users and the client (Cloud, blockchain, payment services, data layers, the digital experience platform, etc.)

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The client had 4 main challenges:
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• Expand user’s financial and technological literacy
• Attract BPI "non-tech-savvy" clients to invest in assets based on blockchain technology
• Build a technological solution to operate NFTs / blockchain digital assets
• Create engagement with BPI clients to invest in Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)
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With our solution, the client was able to create:
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• New revenue streams available from a bank perspective, by implementing this platform, the client was able to offer new asset management services, including NFTs and blockchain-based assets.
• New niche market/customers relying on a community ecosystem
• Business within a network of unique partners expanding towards a different ecosystem
• Enhanced Customer Trust: Simplifying the blockchain and digital asset management process for non-technical users strengthened trust in the new financial products being offered.
• Use this platform as a secure sandbox for their clients to invest in new types of assets securely!
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At a functional level, the bank is now able to:
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• Create and manage their own and curated NFT collections
• Creating an auction for the assets sold on the platform
• Operate a Marketplace with their own clients and partnerships – VHILS is one of their art providers that is using the platform to sell his art!
• Distribute associated royalties within the collections – for the curators, artists, resellers, etc. automatically and transparently.
• Manage blockchain digital assets and web3 wallets associated with their clients

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From an internal perspective, this project was very important to increase knowledge in several areas, namely DXP and Blockchain.

It also helped us increase our expertise: Celfocus expanded its expertise in cutting-edge technologies, especially in blockchain and decentralized ecosystems, but also on DXP platforms.

By delivering this project, Celfocus strengthened its relationship with BPI and CaixaBank, reinforcing its position as a trusted technology partner for financial services innovation, especially in disruptive technologies.

Another cross-domain experience unlocked: merging the blockchain, NFTs space and financial services, especially for the traditional banking sector, provided Celfocus with new market opportunities within the fintech and digital asset management sectors.

Successfully delivering the solution enhanced Celfocus’ reputation and visibility as a leader in integrating blockchain into financial institutions.

This was the first web3/blockchain project within the traditional banking sector in Portugal. This was a tremendous goal for our team and a reason to be proud of!

Our platform made some headlines at Banco BPI, Expresso, Eco Sapo, Pplware, Jornal Económico and Finextra.

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For marketplace project ideation, development, and testing, Celfocus assembled a multidisciplinary team with diverse skills and abilities, which guaranteed the end-to-end project. These were the colleagues involved:

• Daniel Moura - Account Director
• Rui Amaro - Head of Delivery
• Marco Carvalho - Blockchain Specialist
• Sérgio Mendes - Project Manager
• Bernardo Pinto - Solution Architect
• Vitor Moreira - CI/CD Specialist
• Bruno Silva - Observability Specialist
• Soraia Fidalgo & Tânia Ribeiro- Quality Assurance
• João Azevedo - Senior Blockchain Developer
• José Martins - Blockchain Developer
• Susana Santos - Business Analyst
• Beatriz Norberto & Seifeldein Elkallaf - User Experience
• Ráyner Lima, Tiago Gomes & Ibrahim Salama- Java Developers
• André Santos & Rana Ashraf - DXP Developers

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Shortly, it’s highly probable that the platform will evolve to support a diverse array of tokenized assets, including both digital and physical ones. The underlying technology is flexible enough to adapt to these new markets, and as tokenization becomes more widely accepted, the platform could lead the way in new asset types (physical goods or even financial instruments) and even facilitate a global, decentralized marketplace for trading these assets.

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