- JP Morgan, DBS, and Temasek are forming a new blockchain company to launch Patrior.
- The Patrior platform is leveraging the work that JP Morgan and Temasek did in Project Ubin in 2017.
- In the beginning, Patrior will only serve the Singaporean banks to settle payments in the US dollar and Singaporean dollar.
The trio consisting of JP Morgan, a global investment banking giant, DBS, the Singapore-based multinational bank, and Temasek, a state investment firm, will collaborate to develop an interbank payments platform powered by blockchain.
Patrior – The New Firm
They will develop & launch the platform under a JV named Patrior. The new firm aims to reduce the current issues in cross-border payments, foreign exchange, and trade-related transactions.
Making an announcement on Wednesday about their partnership with DBS & Temasek, JP Morgan said that their platform would help reduce the friction in cross-border transactions. The Patrior platform will enable the banks to wade through the enormous payment-related challenges they face due to current financial infrastructure.
Building Upon Project Ubin
JP Morgan and Temasek have worked together on Project Ubin, a 2017 initiative from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. It was a multi-currency platform powered by blockchain. Initially, Patrior Platform will focus on banks based in Singapore.
Leveraging the work on a blockchain-enabled platform that JP Morgan and Temasek did in 2017, the Patrior platform will further the role of blockchain in global financial transactions.
It will facilitate the movement of funds, both in USD and SGD. In the future, the trio has plans to expand the services of the Patrior platform to other markets by incorporating multiple currencies.
Commenting about Patrior Platform’s focus on facilitating digital currency transactions, Sopnendu Mohanty, MAS chief fintech officer, said:
“The launch of Partior is a global watershed moment for digital currencies, marking a move from pilots and experimentations towards commercialization and live adoption.”
DBS Bank on Patrior Platform
Piyush Gupta, CEO of DBS, stated that blockchain and smart contracts play a crucial role in services offered by Patrior. Due to these innovative technologies, Patrior will offer “real-time cross-border multi-currency payments, trade finance, foreign exchange and DVP securities settlements on a world-class platform, with programmability, immutability, traceability built into its suite of services.”
The Trio & Digital Currencies
None of the three participants are new to the world of digital currencies. DBS has launched DBS Digital Exchange in 2020, which provides its customers an option to invest in leading cryptocurrencies like BTC, ETH, BCH, and XRP.
JP Morgan, on the other hand, has been rumored to launch an actively managed Bitcoin fund. They have also hired Ethereum developers beginning in April. Temasek has also dabbled with digital currencies in the past and is supposedly investing in Bitcoins.
