Investment-banking giant JPMorgan has extended the scope of its blockchain-based payments system, JPM Coin, to include the settlement of transactions denominated in euros. German multinational Siemens was the initiator of the first euro payment, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Launched in 2019, the JPM Coin service was initially developed to provide an alternative payment rail for dollar-denominated settlement by wholesale institutional and corporate payments clients, between their various global JPMorgan accounts or to other JPMorgan customers.
The benefits of this blockchain-based system include much faster and more efficient transfers and 24/7 availability, rather than being constrained to traditional bank operating hours.
JPMorgan’s head of Coin Systems for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Basak Toprak, explained that corporate treasurers could improve liquidity by making payments just as they become due:
“There are cost benefits to paying at the right time. This could mean they could earn more interest income on their deposits.”
While JPM Coin has seen transaction flows of around $300 billion dollars in total since its launch, it has not yet had a major roll-out and represents just a tiny fraction of the bank’s payments business. JPMorgan’s daily payments transaction volume is reportedly about $10 trillion, in comparison.
Expanding the system to include euro transactions will likely see a potential increase in uptake, but it is still far from becoming a core product. JPM Coin is only accessible to institutional clients for the settling of payments and runs on the bank’s Onyx permissioned blockchain platform, meaning it is not publicly viewable.
The Onyx platform was launched in 2020 and has enabled multiple secure systems for transferring value, information and assets around the globe.
In March Observers reported on the use of the platform to support the clearing and settlement of dollar transactions by Indian banks in GIFT (Gujarat International Finance Tec-) City, a separately regulated business district created as a new financial hub in the country.
JPMorgan was also fined by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this week for deleting 47 million emails, which it was supposed to keep for three years under regulations for maintaining business records.
Good to see that the SEC isn’t just hitting crypto entities with its naughty stick. Although with that $10 trillion daily payments transaction volume, we don’t suppose that the bank will even particularly notice its $4 million fine.
