JPMorgan creates new unit for Blockchain projects

JP Morgan's digital currency JPM Coin is being used commercially by a large technology company for cross-border payments, reports CNBC.

JPM Coin is a Stablecoin initiative that was first revealed on the 14th of February 2020. The JPM Coin was also used in the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) trials of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC).

In the CNBC report, Takis Georgakopoulos, the bank’s global head of wholesale payments, said, "We are launching Onyx because we believe we are shifting to a period of commercialization of those technologies, moving from research and development to something that can become a real business. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of checks being sent. Using a version of blockchain with the participants being the main issuers of checks and the main operators of lockboxes, it’s possible we can save 75% of the total cost for the industry today, and make checks available in a matter of minutes as opposed to days."

The JP Morgan bank has a new business, with the name Onyx. It servers as an umbrella for bank's blockchain and digital currency initiatives.

The CEO of the Onyx, which has around 100 employees, is Umar Farooq, who had headed up JP Morgan Blockchain projects to date. The website for the new organization states that it houses work on five already published projects.

The IIN Payment Messaging System has been rebranded to a new name as Liink. 

Apart from Liink and JPM Coin, Onyx is the umbrella for the CBDC that works with the MAS, Blockchain debt issuance trial Quorum, the blockchain protocol recently transferred to ConsenSys.