Blockchain Platform Partior Begins Supporting Cross-Border Payments

Partior, the blockchain-based clearing/settlement platform backed by JPMorgan and the government of Singapore, has begun supporting cross-border payments.

According to Forkast, Partior carried out end-to-end settlements with participating banks recently involving both U.S. and Singapore dollars in under two minutes, a drastic reduction from the often days-long transactions of the past.

With global cross-border transactions projected to hit $156 trillion next year, Partior says it wants to ease payment pain points like slow settlements and costly transactions by using what it calls an “atomic” model that cuts the time needed to settle transactions.

The company says this will free up liquidity, reduce settlement risk and cut costs. Partior — Latin for “distribute” or “share” —  says it wants to scale to new partners and currencies, including the euro, pound and yen.

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“Partior is wholly invested in the ideation and co-creation of the next generation of payments technology,” said Jason Thompson, Partior CEO, in a statement. “We’re supporting an increasingly connected world whilst speeding up the process of payment validation and settlement within cross-border transactions. That will take investments of resources, technology and concerted collaboration as we navigate the greatest disruption in the history of money and comes at a significant moment of inflection for the financial services industry.”

Thompson added that the popularity of cryptocurrency demonstrates customers wanted new payment alternatives.

“We now have to bring the same level of transparency, cost and efficiency to regulated currencies,” Thompson said. “At the same time, by being regulated, the customer can be more protected.”

Partior was created earlier this year as a joint effort among JPMorgan, Temasek, Singapore’s state-owned investment firm, and DBS, Singapore’s state bank.

At the time, the Monetary Authority of Singapore praised the effort, with its Chief FinTech Officer Sopnendu Mohanty saying it was “a global watershed moment for digital currencies, marking a move from pilots and experimentations towards commercialization and live adoption.”