JPMorgan Chase & Co. has reportedly partnered with six Indian banks to pilot a blockchain-based platform to settle interbank dollar transactions, at India’s new global financial hub.
The six Indian banks include HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Yes Bank, and IndusInd Bank, in addition to JPMorgan’s own banking unit.
The platform will support India’s plans to position Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City) as an alternative to Singapore and Dubai trading centres, reported Bloomberg.
The pilot project, which will use JPMorgan’s blockchain platform Onyx, will be launched after securing approval from the International Financial Services Center Authority.
Onyx is a JP Morgan business unit created in 2020, which leverages advanced blockchain-based technologies to develop financial services products, platforms, and marketplaces.
JPMorgan India senior country officer and Asia Pacific vice chairman Kaustubh Kulkarni told Bloomberg: “We will be running a pilot project for the next few months as we need to analyse banks’ experience.
“By leveraging blockchain technology to facilitate transactions on a 24×7 basis, the processing is instantaneous and enables GIFT City banks to support their own time-zone and operating hours.”
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has already initiated a domestic non-deliverable forward market dollars-settlement system at the GIFT City.
The existing settlement system could take a few hours to complete the settlement and can settle transactions only on days other than Saturdays and Sundays, or public holidays.
The real-time blockchain-based system, in partnership with a US investment banking company, will address the limitations to make it available round-the-clock, said the publication.
JPMorgan, as part of its Project Guardian, is exploring blockchain-based use cases in the finance sector for institutions, alongside the Monetary Authority of Singapore and DBS Bank.
The blockchain-based use cases include tokenization and decentralised finance (DeFi).
