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JPMorgan rolls out programmable payments for institutional blockchain platform JPM Coin

November 10, 2023 Coin Telegraph

JPMorgan’s blockchain platform JPM Coin has introduced programmable payment functionality for its institutional users.

Multinational banking firm JPMorgan has rolled out a programmable payment feature for institutional users of its private blockchain platform JPM Coin.

Naveen Mallela, who heads up JP Morgan’s bank-led blockchain platform Onyx, shared details of the new functionality on LinkedIn via an initial report from Bloomberg. According to Mallela, the programmable payments feature is now available to all its institutional clients.

The capability is said to enable real-time, programmable treasury functionality and new digital business models. Mallela hailed the launch as a significant milestone in the evolution of JPM Coin and described the newly introduced programmability as the ‘holy grail’ for its blockchain platform.

The Onyx team shared further details of the programmable payments feature in correspondence with Cointelegraph. Onyx and JPM Coin note that this feature has been a goal for the payments industry for several years and touts its offering as a “first-of-its-kind” by a global commercial bank.

The solution caters to blockchain-based accounts on the JPM Coin System, allowing users to program payments using a “If-This-Then-That” interface.

German tech firm Siemens AG is the first institutional client to make use of the programmable payments feature, proving its use as recently as Nov. 6. FedEx and Cargill are also expected to make use of the solution before the end of 2023.

According to Onyx, users can use programmable payments to manage several automated functions. This includes dynamic funding, which allows the specification of a range of rules for dynamically funding a bank account in case of shortfalls.

Event-based payouts are another use case, where users can execute payments based on events including margin calls, delivery of assets, goods and services or fulfillment of contractual obligations.

A statement from Mallela highlights the offering as the catalyst to enable dynamic and event-driven functionality powered by blockchain technology:

“Programmability has been a key objective for digital currencies and tokenized money since the beginning.”

Siemens AG group treasurer Peter Rathgeb adds that the introduction of programmability taps into the “advantages and features from the crypto world” in combination with JPMorgan’s blockchain-based bank accounts.

“This will take Siemens to the next level of automation to not only optimize the use of working capital but also enable data-driven digital business models and support the scalability of our Siemens business from the treasury side.”

JPMorgan is also understood to be developing a new blockchain-based solution for cross-border transactions. As per a Sep. 7 report The new deposit token solution is a separate offering from its JPM Coin platform and will have to await the regulatory green light in the United States.

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SWIFT action: JPMorgan and Visa team on cross-border blockchain payments

October 12, 2022 Coin Telegraph

B2B Connect

Visa is set to integrate its B2B connect network with JPMorgan’s suit of blockchain based cross-border payment products.

Traditional finance and payment giants JPMorgan and Visa are teaming up to streamline the use of their private blockchain solutions Liink and B2B Connect to facilitate cross-border payments.

According to an Oct. 11 report from Forbes, JPMorgan’s Liink is a network specifically designed for cross-border transfers and is offered under the bank’s blockchain and payments initiative Onyx. Onyx provides a platform for institutions to share financial information and validate transactions.

Visa’s B2B Connect is a similar network to Liink that was built for institutional grade use and has now been integrated with Onxy’s Confirm.

Confirm is an account-information validation product, and ensures that transacting parties provide genuine identities and correct information. Onyx touts that Confirm is capable of verifying more than 2 billion bank accounts from 3,500 financial institutions.

Finextra reported yesterday that J.P. Morgan is looking to rope in a host of founding member banks across the globe, as it works to launch Confirm in 10 countries by the end of this year. Moving forward, the bank is said to be eying a roll out in 30 countries next year.

German financial behemoth Deutsche Bank has also signed on to become a founding member of Confirm.

Confirm’s global head Alex Littleton explained in a public statement that “Confirm’s growth is heavily influenced by network effects,” adding that, “Naming Deutsche Bank as a founding member, while also establishing interconnectivity to Visa B2B’s blockchain, will accelerate our adoption on a global scale.”

With Visa teaming with JPMorgan and its suite of blockchain products, it seems that the duo have an eye on providing an alternative to the commonly used Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) messaging system to manage and facilitate cross border payments.

The notion of cross-border payments has been in the spotlight this week, with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) revealing on Monday that it could look to utilize blockchain tech to provide solutions to current issues with such, including speed and costs.

Ravi Menon, Managing Director, Monetary Authority of Singapore, noted in a keynote speech that the current state of cross-border payments is “not fit for the 21st century,” adding that:

“It is slow, costly, opaque, and inefficient, relying on an archaic network of correspondent banks.”

He outlined that the expansion of “private sector blockchain-based payment networks” could be one of the possible ways to solve this.

XRP creators Ripple Labs has also made moves with its cross-border payments product On-Demand Liquidity (ODL ) this week. On Oct.11 it announced partnerships with payments firm Lemonway and money transfer provider Xbaht that will see the duo leverage the ODL network to provide crypto payments for customers in France, Thailand and Sweden.

JPMorgan CEO calls crypto ‘decentralized Ponzi schemes’

September 22, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Banks

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon regards crypto as a tale of two cities, with "crypto tokens that you call currencies" on one side and "real" innovations on the other.

While testifying before United States (U.S.) lawmakers, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon referred to himself as a “major skeptic” on “crypto tokens that you call currency like Bitcoin,” labeling them as “decentralized Ponzi schemes.”

Dimon was asked what keeps him from being more active in the crypto space during an oversight hearing held by the House Financial Services Committee on Sept. 21.

Dimon emphasized that he sees value in blockchain, decentralized finance (DeFi), ledgers, smart contracts, and “tokens that do something," but then proceeded to lambast crypto tokens that identify as currencies.

Asked for his thoughts about the draft U.S. stablecoin bill, Dimon said he believes that there is nothing wrong with stablecoins that are properly regulated and that the regulation should be similar to what money market funds are subject to.

Dimon has once described Bitcoin as a "fraud" and has reiterated in the past he has no interest in backing the sector on a personal level. He has softened his stance on crypto on occasion, once highlighting that it can serve important use cases at times such as cross-border payments.

Despite Dimon’s views on the cryptocurrency space, JPMorgan has been pushing into the blockchain technology space. The financial giant launched its own in-house stablecoin — JPM Coin in October 2020 — the first cryptocurrency backed by a U.S bank, which was aimed at increasing settlement efficiency.

A week after rolling out the coin, the bank launched a new business division dedicated to blockchain technology called Onyx. Since then the Onyx platform has been utilized by large institutional customers for round-the-clock global payments.

JPMorgan also became the first major bank in the Metaverse following the opening of its virtual lounge in the blockchain-based world Decentraland in February. The move followed a report that was released by the firm which referred to the Metaverse as a $1 trillion opportunity.

JPMorgan has been hiring new staff to push into the blockchain and crypto space, most recently announcing on Sept. 9 that it has hired former Microsoft executive Tahreem Kamptom to be its senior payments executive. Kamptom is expected to help JPMorgan explore blockchain tech given his Linkedin bio shows he has worked on crypto-related payment methods.

During the hearing, the lawmakers also asked other top U.S bank CEOs whether they had plans to finance crypto mining. Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, and Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf all suggested that their banks had no intentions of doing so.

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Goldman Sachs reportedly started trading on JPMorgan’s repo blockchain

June 23, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Blockchain

Goldman Sachs reportedly traded digitized treasury bonds for JPM Coin on JPMorgan Chase's Onyx blockchain platform.

After six months of eyeing JPMorgan Chase’s custom blockchain service for repo markets, Goldman Sachs has started trading on the platform.

Mathew McDermott, global head of digital assets for Goldman Sachs’ global markets division, confirmed the first transaction dated June 17 in an interview, Bloomberg reported.

In the trade, Goldman Sachs swapped a tokenized version of a United States Treasury bond for JPM Coin, JPMorgan’s dollar-pegged stablecoin. JPMorgan started its private blockchain service to drive efficiency in repo agreements last year. The platform uses JPM Coin to swap digitized United States Treasury bonds.

Goldman Sachs was one of the first financial institutions to notice the platform. Last year, McDermott mentioned the efficiency of JPMorgan’s blockchain-based repo-market service, saying that “enterprise blockchain can address a real-world problem in the financial system.”

As a trillion-dollar market, repurchase or “repo” agreements are short-term lending arrangements for dealers in government bonds. An overnight repo allows dealers to sell government bonds to investors and repurchase them the next day at a slightly higher price.

Calling the trade a pivotal moment for the digitization of transactional activity, McDermott highlighted that, unlike the traditional repo market, the precise timing of the transaction could be logged thanks to blockchain technology.

Smart contracts on the blockchain enable the collateral and cash to interchange simultaneously and immediately, and this is a big step up for the repo market, according to McDermott:

“We pay interest per the minute. We firmly think this will change the nature of the intraday marketplace.”

JPMorgan Chase first announced the launch of its own stablecoin back in early 2019, with an initial focus on international settlements by major corporations. First trades started in December, and since then, JPM Coin has been embraced by transnational corporations for around-the-clock cross-border payments.

The bank established its version of the Ethereum blockchain, Onyx, which is now processing more than $1 billion worth of transactions daily.

onyx