J.P. Morgan Will Begin Customer Trials of Its “JPM Coin”

J.P. Morgan Chase, one of the largest U.S. banks, will begin trials of its “JPM Coin” with several of its corporate customers, Bloomberg Japan reported on June 25.

According to the Tuesday report, the aim of the trial is to speed up transactions, such as payments and bond transactions between firms. Umar Farooq, the bank’s Head of Blockchain Initiatives, has said that customers from Europe, Japan, and the US have shown interest in the technology, which could make low cost, almost instant transfer of funds possible. Bloomberg Japan noted that the trials are being conducted with the assumption that regulatory permissions would be granted in the future. Unfortunately the names of the companies that will be involved in the trial were not mentioned.

The “JPM Coin” was first revealed by CNBC in mid February of 2019, with the coin being presented as a stablecoin, backed 1-to-1 by the U.S. dollar. To get a hold of the coin in the future, users will need to deposit fiat in the bank in exchange for the token, which can then be transferred using a permissioned distributed ledger. The “JPM Coin” runs on top of Quorum, which is a private version of Ethereum developed by the bank. When asked about the development of the token, Farooq told Bloomberg:

The technology is very good, but it takes time in terms of licensing and approval. It must be explained.

In early May, Microsoft announced a strategic partnership with J.P. Morgan, with the goal of driving enterprise adoption of Quorum. The partnership also made Quorum the first distributed ledger platform available through the Azure Blockchain Service, enabling customers of the company to build and scale blockchain networks in the cloud. Umar Farooq stated at the time:

We are incredibly proud of the success Quorum has had over the last four years, as organizations around the world use Quorum to solve complex business and societal problems via blockchain solutions. We are delighted to partner alongside Microsoft as we continue to strengthen Quorum and expand capabilities and services on the platform. Azure will bring unique strengths to enterprise clients using Quorum.