DBS announced on Wednesday it has partnered with JPMorgan and Temasek to launch a cross-border payments platform, known as Partior. According to the trio, Partior aims “to disrupt the traditional cross-border payments ‘hub and spoke’ model,” which has notably caused common “pain points” such as multiple validations on payment details by banks, which translate to costly and onerous post transaction exception handling and reconciliation activities.
“Partior recognises the need for more efficient digital clearing and settlement solutions across the banking industry, and targets to address these challenges through the use of blockchain solutions to enable next generation, programmable value transfer for participating banks and their clients in real-time across a common and open platform.”
The companies also revealed that when complete, Partior aims to provide 24/7 infrastructure that will enable financial institutions and developers to co-create applications that support use cases such as FX Payment Versus Payment (PVP), Delivery Versus Payment (DVP), and peer-to-peer (P2P) escrows to complement and value-add to global financial ecosystems. Piyush Gupta, CEO of DBS, shared more details about Partior by stating:
“The open platform will enable banks around the world to provide real-time cross-border multi-currency payments, trade finance, foreign exchange and DVP securities settlements on a world-class platform, with programmability, immutability, traceability built into its suite of services.”
The platform will reportedly start with a focus on facilitating flows primarily between Singapore-based banks in both USD and SGD, with the intent to expand service offerings to other markets and in various currencies. Partior’s platform will be designed to complement ongoing Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) initiatives and use cases.
DBS added the operation of Partior as well as the completion of development, launch, and availability of services on the proposed platform are subject to obtaining any required regulatory consents and approvals.