75 banks join JPMorgan-led blockchain payment project Interbank Information Network

JPMorgan
CEO Jamie Dimon.

Getty/Win
McNamee

• JPMorgan has built a blockchain-powered cross-border
  payment product: the Interbank Information Network.
• 75 banks have now signed up to test it, including
  Santander and Societe Generale.
• JPMorgan is one of several banks looking at how to use
  blockchain technology in mainstream finance.

A blockchain-based payment project led by JPMorgan has now signed
up 75 banks to help testing,
according to the Financial Times.

The FT reported on Tuesday that lenders including Santander and
Societe Generale are testing the Interbank Information Network
(IIN). JPMorgan built the information sharing programme on its
own proprietary blockchain platform, Quorom, and has been testing
it with a handful of lenders since October 2017.

IIN is a shared ledger for cross-border payments that allows
banks to quickly and easily add or correct information necessary
for payments sent between banks. It competes with legacy
platforms such as SWIFT and new startups like Ripple.

JPMorgan’s CFO Marianne Lake told BI in March: “One of the
most costly and time-consuming elements of executing cross-border
payments today is in correspondent banks having to research and
respond to compliance inquiries of each other. Today, payments
that are flagged for compliance reasons can be delayed for up to
two weeks, but this technology can reduce that to minutes.”

Lake said at the time that other banks have “a lot of appetite”
to “join the party.”

JPMorgan is
one of several banks trying to bring blockchain technology into
mainstream finance. First popularised as the technological
underpinning of bitcoin, blockchain’s ability to securely share
information has made it attractive to high-security,
collaborative industries such as banking.

Many of the other projects in existence are either on a smaller
scale or at an earlier stage and JPMorgan’s head of blockchain
Umar Farooq told the FT: “This is the single biggest.”

Get the latest Bitcoin price here.>>