In the nation's newest global financial centre, JPMorgan Chase & Co. has partnered with six Indian banks to launch a blockchain-based platform for the settlement of interbank dollar transactions.

 

“We will be running a pilot project for the next few months as we need to analyze banks’ experience,” Kaustubh Kulkarni, senior country officer for India and vice chairman for Asia Pacific at JPMorgan, said in an interview.

 

In addition to JPMorgan's own banking division at the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City), the banks include leading private lenders including HDFC Bank Ltd, ICICI Bank Ltd, Axis Bank Ltd, Yes Bank Ltd, and IndusInd Bank Ltd, he said.

 

The action would give New Delhi's efforts to portray GIFT City as a rival trading hub to Singapore and Dubai another boost. A domestic non-deliverable forward market settled in dollars has been launched by the Reserve Bank of India in GIFT City.

 

The settlement process could take a few hours under the current settlement procedure. Additionally, transactions are not resolved on weekends, holidays, or on Saturdays and Sundays. The real-time blockchain-backed system would do rid of this obstacle and make it accessible 24/7.

 

“By leveraging blockchain technology to facilitate transactions on a 24x7 basis, processing is instantaneous and enables GIFT City banks to support their own time-zone and operating hours,” Kulkarni said.

 

Onyx, a blockchain technology developed by JPMorgan, was to be used for the pilot project's inauguration yesterday after receiving authorisation from the International Financial Services Centre Authority.

 

2020 saw the creation of Onyx, JPMorgan's blockchain-based platform for wholesale payment exchanges.