Bank ABC, a Bahrain-based bank, has launched a new cross-border payments service using JPMorgan’s Onyx blockchain platform.
JPMorgan and the Bahraini bank experimented for two years before launching the service. It is the first partnership between JPMorgan’s blockchain service and a bank in the Middle East. It is also one of the first commercial deployments of blockchain technology for cross-border payments.
The service was developed in close collaboration with the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB), which supervised a trial in January 2022 in which JPM Coin was used to settle payments between the national Aluminium Bahrain and its U.S. counterparties through Bank ABC.
Bahrain-based Bank ABC will use JPMorgan’s Onyx Coin Systems for blockchain-based cross-border payments in a soft or limited launch.
The new service is expected to be more cost-effective and reduce settlement times relative to traditional solutions. It will initially use the U.S. dollar in transactions involving Bahrain, the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Hong Kong. More locations and transactions with the euro are also being planned.
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