The launch makes SoFi the first national bank to issue a stablecoin on a public, permissionless blockchain, the company said in a Thursday (Dec. 18) news release.
SoFi said the coin will allow it to act as a stablecoin infrastructure provider for banks, FinTechs, and enterprise platforms. Because SoFiUSD is on a public, permissionless blockchain, partners can move funds 24/7 with near-instant settlement “at fractional-cent pricing,” the release said.
This lets them better manage liquidity and deliver faster and more transparent services to their customers, the company added, noting that SoFiUSD will soon be available to all SoFi members.
“Blockchain is a technology super cycle that will fundamentally change finance, not just in payments, but across every area of money,” said Anthony Noto, CEO of SoFi.
“With SoFiUSD, we’re using the infrastructure we’ve built over the last decade and applying it to real-world challenges in financial services. Companies today struggle with slow settlement, fragmented providers, and unverified reserve models. SoFi is helping address these gaps by combining our regulatory strength as a national bank with transparent, fully reserved on-chain technology to provide a safer and more efficient way for partners to move funds.”
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“And for companies operating in countries with volatile currencies, SoFi plans for SoFiUSD to be used as a secured dollar-denominated asset in a consumer debit or secured credit account,” the release added.
In another digital asset milestone for SoFi, the company announced last month that it had become the first nationally-chartered bank to offer consumer cryptocurrency trading.
SoFi in June added “crypto-powered capabilities” to its digital financial services, saying this would be the among many new cryptocurrency and blockchain-related offerings.
Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote earlier this week about the rise of private chains in the financial world, noting that it is where much of the growth in enterprise blockchain adoption in the last two years has happened.
This week saw the news that JPMorgan Chase is increasing its blockchain efforts with its first tokenized money market fund, while HSBC, Swift and Ant International last week tested a new cross-border payment solution using the latter’s proprietary and permissioned private blockchain and HSBC’s internal tokenization platform.
“This is not a rejection of blockchain’s technical model, but an implicit posture that existing open blockchain networks are not necessarily compatible with the operational realities of regulated finance,” PYMNTS wrote.
