- New connection with major Thai bank via Stellar-backed Visa B2B
- Follows huge new partnership with
- Signals surge in value for XLM in near future
Stellar Lumens (XLM) is deepening its ties to the banking industry via a new partnership between the leading Thai bank K-Bank and Visa which will pilot a new blockchain-based B2B international money transfer platform.
Commenting on the new arrangement, Visa County Manager said: “Visa is proud that we have representation from a Thai financial institution in the pilot programme. Building on the enterprise blockchain technology, Visa B2B Connect is a new transaction platform designed for the exchange of high-value international payments between participating banks on behalf of their corporate clients. Managed by Visa end-to-end, Visa B2B Connect combines Visa’s core capabilities in security, governance and distributed ledger technology.”
If readers are puzzled about where Stellar Lumens comes into this, the connection is as follows: VisaB2B was developed by none other than blockchain startup Chain Inc. Subsequently, this company was acquired by the Stellar-backed for-profit “Lightyear” company earlier this month to create the new firm ‘Interstellar’, a move which retired both the Lightyear and Chain brands.
All the financial institutions that had hitherto been using Chain, which included Visa, would begin using the public Stellar blockchain under the terms of the acquisition. In effect, that means that K-Bank’s new offering is also running on the Stellar blockchain.
The development helps to consolidate a trend that has been evident for some time. The Stellar network clearly has ambitions to become more entrenched in the global banking industry, which is showing reciprocal interest especially after its partnership with IBM, which claims bragging rights over 80% of the financial technology used by banks across the world.
Following the partnership, IBM launched its Stellar-based money transfer services that will enable banks to clear international money transfer transactions in a matter of seconds, rather than days as is still the convention. Inevitably, Stellar benefits by gaining a major lead in the race to disrupt the money transfer online market.
Following the announcement of the K-Bank deal, the money market barely reacted and the value of XLM hardly moved a millimetre. However, it’s pretty certain that once the market rebounds from its current doldrums and the sheer scale of this news sinks in, Stellar is on course to explode in value.
It now has an impressive use case for asset tokenisation, with Security Token Offerings (STOs) fast representing the future of financing by eliminating all the loopholes associated with Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and fully complying with all business security regulations. Stellar appears poised to lead the coming STO revolution with its DEX platform, and it’s proving highly scalable and there are no fees attached. What’s not to like?
With STOs gathering momentum, it’s not hard to imagine companies adopting it as the new norm for their financial dealings. This would effectively tokenise the stock markets and unlock unquantifiable potential in the blue-chip stocks. All, including international money transfer services and the tokenisation of securities, are trillion dollar markets.
So, Stellar is slowly but steadily becoming entrenched in the banking industry as well as the broader financial services industry. The tipping point toward accelerated, soaring value appears to be approaching.
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