J.P. Morgan Teams Up With 6 Indian Banks To Settle Interbank Transactions Using Blockchain

Usually, it takes days, and only during the work week, to settle transactions. J.P. Morgan’s’s pilot program—alongside top lenders HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Yes Bank, IndusInd Bank, and J.P. Morgan's banking unit in GIFT City, India (Gujarat International Finance Tec-City)—will be able to speed up transactions, thus reducing wait time for interbank dollar transactions to be completed.

GIFT City is one of India’s key hubs of technological and financial innovation and its competition with Singapore to become the region’s leading financial hub is palpable. According to a Times of India article, J.P. Morgan’s managing director and head of Onyx Global Coin Systems Naveen Mallela said that “India has arguably the most advanced global payment infrastructure, and [these] digital currency rails by Onyx [are] the next add-on to [that] infrastructure.”

Mallela’s involvement in the pilot is an indication that the multi-bank project falls under the umbrella of J.P. Morgan’s Onyx Coin Systems project. In addition to Coin Systems, J.P. Morgan’s Onyx program consists of three other projects: Onyx Liink, Onyx Digital Assets, and Onyx Blockchain Launch. The adoption of Blockchain technology to improve not only the efficiency of traditional financial transactions, but the cost of them as well, is gaining the attention of most global and central banks.