Deutsche Bank has become the first top tier European institution to join JPMorgan's Interbank Information Network (IIN), a landmark milestone for the DLT-based payments settlement system.
The arrival of Deutsche Bank comes as JPMorgan begins running live transactions over the network, with 65 banks already up-and-running.
So far, 330 mostly small to mid-tier banks have signed up to be part of IIN. Alongside Canada's big three banks, Deutsche Bank's conversion to the project is seen a major first step on the road to attracting other top-tier institutions.
Indeed, Singapore's Business Times has just reported that the second-largest bank in South East Asia by assets, OCBC, has also committed to IIN, further increasing momentum among Tier One institutions.
“The intent with IIN was always to develop a meaningful ecosystem of bank users, all focused on harnessing emerging technologies such as blockchain to better address the complex cross border payments industry,” says John Hunter, global head of clearing for JPMorgan Chase. “In just one year, we’ve seen IIN scale as well as expand in terms of role and capabilities - and we are excited at the growth to come.”
Originally launched as a pilot in 2017, IIN has been positioned as a way to both address delays in cross-border payments and see off the threat from new non-bank competitors in the space such as TransferWise which currently processes in excess of £3bn in payments per month.
The idea involves a mutually-accessible ledger built on JPMorgan's private blockchain Quorum that allows permissioned banks to exchange information about compliance checks and other exceptions preventing complted payments.
Hunter says the bank is exploring new applications that can be deployed over IINas well as empowering participant banks to be part of a developer ecosystem in which they can create their own products for possible use across the network.