- JPMorgan, which is one of the most well-known names in the financial services sector, will work with the Singaporean government’s Monetary Authority body – as well as other partners such as state investment fund Temasek – in the new venture.
- The venture, which is called Partior, will see firms and organisations working together to offer new settlement services and solutions as well as provision for foreign exchange transactions.
- A senior figure at JPMorgan described the move as a way for the payments industry, and especially its clearing and settlement aspects, to change and develop over time.
Leading financial services institution JPMorgan has confirmed that it will work alongside the Singaporean government’s investment fund Temasek as part of a new push for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
The two firms have now set up a firm called Partior to achieve this aim, alongside collaboration with DBS Bank and the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
The firms’ goal is for Partior to assist central banks in running pilot programmes for potential future digital currencies that operate on a national basis and aid in the management of the country’s money supply.
Partior will now develop a platform designed around the blockchain that offers digital clearing products.
It will also offer settlement services, as well as a function for foreign exchange transactions.
The next step will be for Partior to look for clients in the form of other banks.
These banks will then participate in a network.
It comes after JPMorgan instituted a blockchain unit called Onyx as part of its Project Ubin focus.
CBDCs are used by governments and monetary institutions as a way of enhancing payments, including online money transfer ones.
For DBS Bank, the firm’s chief executive Piyush Gupta argued that there were significant delays in the payments process at the moment.
Gupta said that this caused various different sorts of “inefficiencies” across the asset spectrum.
“The current hub and spoke arrangement in global payments often results in delays as confirmations from various intermediaries are needed before a settlement is treated as final,” he said.
“This in turn has a knock-on effect and creates inefficiencies in the final settlement of other assets.”
Takis Georgakopoulos, the global head of wholesale payments at JPMorgan, said that the new “shared ledger infrastructure” would help solve this problem.
He said that the way that payments are executed could be enhanced significantly by the use of the blockchain.
Georgakopoulos said that Partior would be leading the way as a provider of a “wholesale payments rail”.
“We believe a shared ledger infrastructure such as the Partior platform will change the way payments are cleared and settled, through this first-of-its-kind, wholesale payments rail based on digitised commercial bank money,” he explained.
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