The Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) has joined JP Morgan’s interbank information network (INN), becoming the first Singaporean bank in the network.
Reported by the Business Times Singapore on Friday, a total of 343 banks have joined the INN since 2018, out of which 134 banks are from the Asia-Pacific region. Most participants in the network come from Japan with 80 banks.
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Commenting on the development, John Hunter, global head of clearing for JPMorgan Chase, said: “The intent with IIN was always to develop a meaningful ecosystem of bank users, all focused on harnessing emerging technologies such as blockchain to better address the complex cross border payments industry.”
“In just one year, we’ve seen IIN scale as well as expand in terms of role and capabilities – and we are excited at the growth to come,” he added.
Bringing blockchain to banking
Launched as a pilot in 2017, the INN is aimed to overcome the setbacks of the traditional banking infrastructure in the global payments process including cross border payments. The network uses JP Morgan’s proprietary blockchain called Quorum, which is built on Ethereum-blockchain.
Earlier this year, the Wall Street giant integrated the Zether protocol to the network to enhance privacy-oriented feature for blockchain transactions.
Meanwhile, the bank is also working on its own cryptocurrency called JPM Coin which will be used by its corporate clients to increase settlement efficiency.
Although no timeline to introduce the digital currency has been set yet, media reports revealed that the bank is looking to start the test for JPM Coin with selected corporate clients in the United States, Europe, and Japan.
Apart from JP Morgan, another Wall Street bank – Wells Fargo – recently announced that it is developing a digital currency for cross-border payments and planning to start the pilot in next year.