The Qatar National Bank Group (QNB), one of the Middle East’s largest banks, has handpicked JPMorgan’s Kinexys for corporate payments.
Qatar National Bank Group (QNB) recently adopted Kinexys, JPMorgan’s blockchain platform. According to a Bloomberg report, the goal is to process corporate digital payments in the region. More importantly, this latest development is a pivot from the pain points experienced by users of traditional banking infrastructures.
QNB Departs from Limitations of Traditional Banking Infrastructures
In the Traditional Finance (TradFi) ecosystem, cross-border payments are constrained by their limitation to only weekdays. Most times, transactions even take a few days to complete.
By taking on JPMorgan’s Kinexys, QNB is pushing for its departure from this scenario. Blockchain is known to present a more instant payment system that runs every hour, and sometimes, with lower transaction fees. Kinexys leverages a permissioned blockchain system that allows participating clients to transfer the funds held on deposit within JPMorgan in a real-time manner.
This blockchain payments platform is known to process as much as $3 billion in daily transactions.
As impressive as this figure looks, it is barely a fraction of the total transactions that JPMorgan handles, worth about $10 trillion in daily payments. Kinexys boasts of other integrations with the likes of Chainlink and Ondo Finance. The firm used the platform to expand to FX with instant dollar-euro settlements.
Kamel Moris, QNB’s Executive Vice President of transactional banking, noted that this development is a “treasurer’s dream.” He highlighted the 24/7 service window with the blockchain payment system, adding that they “can guarantee payments as fast as two minutes.”
SWIFT Taps Consensys for Blockchain-Based Cross-Border Payments Trial
Similar to QNB’s collaboration with Kinexys, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is also teaming up with Consensys and a handful of unspecified institutions to establish a blockchain-based settlement system. It is looking to roll out a 24/7 real-time cross-border payment system.
Maintaining compliance remains a priority in this development, but the new blockchain will also push for interoperability with “existing and emerging networks.”
Notably, this aligns with SWIFT’s push for bridging the gap between Traditional Finance (TradFi) and digital assets. Moreso, it intends to foster interoperability between digital assets created on different platforms.
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