J.P. Morgan Chase has launched euro-denominated transactions with its blockchain-based JPM Coin.
This offering for corporate clients went live Wednesday (June 21), Bloomberg reported Friday (June 23).
Reached by PYMNTS, J.P. Morgan Chase confirmed the report.
The new euro-denominated JPM Coin payments join the dollar-denominated ones the bank has offered since 2019, according to the report.
In the four years it has offered JPM Coin, J.P. Morgan Chase has used it for about $300 billion in transactions, the report said.
The JPM Coin is typically used by large multinationals to transfer funds to and from their J.P. Morgan accounts or to make payments to other bank customers, per the report.
Its benefits include payments that operate around the clock, payments that are executed more quickly than traditional transactions, and the ability to initiate payments that are not yet due, according to the report.
“There are cost benefits to paying at the right time,” Basak Toprak, head of coin systems for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at J.P. Morgan, told Bloomberg. “This could mean they could earn more interest income on their deposits.”
J.P. Morgan was the first major U.S. bank to introduce its own digital token for real-world use. It said in February 2019 that the blockchain-based cryptocurrency is designed to enable “the instantaneous transfer of payments between institutional accounts.”
“The JPM Coin isn’t money per se,” the bank explained in a blog post when announcing its dollar-denominated digital token. “It is a digital coin, representing United States dollars, held in designated accounts at J.P. Morgan Chase N.A. In short, a JPM Coin always has a value equivalent to one U.S. dollar. When one client sends money to another over the blockchain, JPM Coins are transferred and instantaneously redeemed for the equivalent amount of U.S. dollars, reducing the typical settlement time.”
As PYMNTS reported at the time, in addition to using the digital coin to settle payments between corporate clients, the bank also said it would use blockchain to send money across borders. Reports also noted that the use of blockchain to underpin trade finance can help supplant traditional methods, such as wire transfers.
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