More than 70 banks join JPMorgan’s blockchain payments trial

An interbank blockchain project launched by JPMorgan in October 2017 has been joined by more than 70 banks, The Financial Times reported September 25.

Royal Bank of Canada and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ) were the first two banks to join the Interbank Information Network (IIN) – an initiative focused on using blockchain technology to minimize friction in the global payments process.

According to FT, 75 banks have now joined the project including the likes of Société Générale and Santander. The complete list of participating banks can be found here.

Powered by Quorum – a permissioned-variant of the Ethereum blockchain, developed by J.P. Morgan, IIN aims to speed up the processing of global payments. A shared digital ledger across banks will help reduce the number of participants currently needed to respond to compliance and other data-related inquiries that delay payments. In addition, IIN also allows secure peer-to-peer messaging among participants.

“One of the complaints that the non-banks have been pointing out [relates to] these frictional processes in the existing cross-border payment mechanism,” Emma Loftus, global head of global payments and receivables at JPMorgan Treasury Services, said. “Given that things like blockchain are addressing some of these age-old problems, we’re able to solve the problems ourselves.”

According to the report, the participating banks expect to put around 14,500 USD-denominated payments per day through the enlarged network. JPMorgan plans to add more banks as well as expand the IIN into non-US currencies.

“If you look at it (IIN) in terms of what blockchain applications are live, there are very few and most of them are either in pilot or proof of concept stage,” said Umar Farooq, head of blockchain at JPMorgan. “This is the single biggest.”

[Update: Adds link to the official release in the third para]