Singapore, October 26, 2021 - Partior, a blockchain technology provider for payments clearing and settlement, has announced that it is operational and has begun its first pilot with participating banks, achieving end-to-end settlements in SGD and USD of less than 120 seconds. With global cross-border transactions expected to reach US$156 trillion in 2022, Partior is well placed to solve existing pain points such as slow settlement speeds and costly transaction fees. The exponential leap forward in reducing settlement time is creating significant interest across the payments ecosystem.

Partior was founded by DBS, J.P. Morgan and Temasek, and has its genesis in Project Ubin - a collaboration between the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the financial industry to explore the use of blockchain and distributed ledger technology for clearing and settlement services. As with any significant industrial disruption there is a need for pioneers of change and adoption. Today, Partior celebrates its launch as an independent global technology provider.

The new platform uses an ‘atomic’ model to replace the existing sequential operational approach to payments settlement. Simultaneous settlement, combined with a 24x7, always-on infrastructure may help speed up wholesale settlements by banks from an average of two days to 120 seconds when the banks on the payment chain are using Partior. In turn, the reduction in settlement time may free up liquidity and reduce settlement risk. Use of the Partior platform also increases visibility of payment flows for participating banks by potentially reducing the need for intermediaries. Reducing intermediaries involved in payment processing for settlement helps solve another significant issue in the form of the existing ecosystem - cost - by decreasing the number of parties that deduct fees from the payment.

“Partior is wholly invested in the ideation and co-creation of the next generation of payments technology,” said Jason Thompson, CEO, Partior. “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.”

Partior provides financial institutions and service providers with an atomic clearing and settlement solution. It aims to facilitate innovation and collaborations through an ecosystem of banks, technology companies, and specialist service providers to co-create the next generation of real time regulated compliance services in its next stage of development. This will transform the way money and assets are transacted globally.

Partior is also an official partner of the MAS’ Global CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) Challenge. The aim of the challenge is to find innovative retail CBDC solutions to enhance payment efficiencies and promote financial inclusion - exactly the same aim as Partior. To that end, Partior has deployed a Digital Currency Sandbox in which Standard Chartered and its fintech partner Shareable Asset – one of the finalists of the challenge– participated in an experiment with the integration and interoperability of their solution.

“Globally, there is strong interest among central banks in the use of CBDCs to streamline transaction processing and make financial systems more efficient, transparent and cost-effective,” said Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer, MAS. “The Global CBDC challenge is an important milestone to explore the global development of retail CDBC solutions in partnership with the international community. Partior’s involvement as a partner in the challenge is a testament to that, and we look forward to working with them, their partners and the wider financial services industry.”

Furthermore, following the initial pilot, Bank ABC (Arab Banking Corporation B.S.C.) will be collaborating with J.P. Morgan to have J.P. Morgan send its payments through the Partior platform so that Bank ABC’s corporate clients may benefit from real-time settlement of high-value payments from Bahrain to beneficiaries in other countries and vice versa enabled by Partior.