Pilot Indian banks include HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Yes Bank and IndusInd Bank, as well as the local banking arm of JPMorgan. In an interview with Bloomberg, Kaustubh Kulkarni, JPMorgan’s senior manager for Asia Pacific, said the pilot should be completed in the next few months and will provide data to analyze banks’ experiences with blockchain.
According to Kulkarni, by introducing blockchain into international payments, New Delhi could become a major center of innovation, on par with Singapore and Dubai. With the current payment system interbank settlements can take several hours. In addition, on weekends and public holidays there are also delays with the calculations. This problem can be solved by blockchain – payments are made in real time around the clock, said a top JPMorgan executive.
Testing will take place using JPMorgan’s blockchain platform Onyx following approval from the International Financial Services Management Center. The Onyx platform was created by JPMorgan Bank in 2020 for wholesale payment transactions.
In 2021, JPMorgan Chase announced a partnership with the Central Bank of Bahrain and the Arab Banking Corporation BSC (Bank ABC) to launch a similar blockchain testing project for international payments.