- In 2018, IBM Blockchain World Wire was a real-time global payment network built on the Stellar blockchain.
- Stellar’s architecture was well-suited for payments, providing guidance, rapid consensus, and minimal costs, all of which aligned perfectly with IBM’s goals.
IBM first announced a partnership with Stellar in 2017 and later built IBM Blockchain World Wire, a real-time cross-border payment network using the Stellar protocol.
The project is designed to shorten settlement times, reduce costs and allow banks to issue stablecoins or use digital assets for final settlement.
World Wire launched in limited production in 2019 with several banking partners and pilot corridors. Yet IBM later changed its approach, moving World Wire technology to client accelerators and open source parts of the code while reorganizing operational priorities.
The partnership increased real-world experimentation with settlement models for public blockchains and helped raise Stellar’s profile.
In an extensive post on X, Marco Salzmann, an asset analyst, explained the reach of the initiative:
IBM World Wire aimed to connect banks, financial institutions and payment providers, a global system without SWIFT. The pilot network included: 72 countries, 47 currencies, 44 banks and institutions
Why IBM chose Stellar
IBM explored a range of blockchain protocols before ultimately choosing Stellar, and the decision came down to both performance and usability. Stellar’s Consensus Protocol (SCP) can process thousands of transactions per second and complete settlement in just three to five seconds.
This makes XLM ideal for global financial operations that require speed and reliability.
Each transaction costs just a fraction of a cent, reducing overhead compared to traditional payment systems. Compatibility with ISO 20022 (the same messaging standard used by banks around the world) made integration smoother and more compatible with existing infrastructure.
Another advantage was Stellar’s ability to let banks issue their own stablecoins, digital tokens backed by fiat currency, giving institutions flexibility and control.
Unlike proof-of-work blockchains such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), Stellar is energy efficient and operates without the high computational costs of mining.
And while ETH and Solana (SOL) dominate the stablecoin activity, Stellar Lumen played a role in IBM’s design. It was a bridge between fiat-backed stablecoins; XLM allowed banks to complete cross-currency payments in USD, XLM and EUR in seconds, reducing settlement times from days to almost instantaneous.
Currently, XLM’s Total Value Locked is $148.44 Million, which is up 0.46% over the past 24 hours. The market capitalization of stablecoins is $248.38 million, with USDC having a dominance of 95.26%. Marco explained: “This is not a coincidence, it is a strategic positioning for the future of global payment networks.”
At the end of 2024, the Stellar network activated Protocol 23. The primary goal was to enhance the functionality of smart contracts and improve overall efficiency. The upgrade introduced parallel transaction execution for smart contracts, allowing multiple operations to be processed simultaneously.
This increased scalability to approximately 5,000 transactions per second (TPS). It also reduced latency, making decentralized finance and payment applications faster and more responsive than ever before.
Building on that progress, Protocol 24, deployed in late October, served as a refinement update focused on stability and reliability. Like Crypto Newsflash reported, the protocol will address a bug the state archive function, which ensures smoother long-term operations for node operators.
As part of the rollout, all nodes were required to update their software to maintain compatibility with the latest version, further strengthening Stellar.
Stellar is currently trading above the USD 0.30 level and is changing hands around USD 0.3257 at the time of writing. XLM now faces notable resistance at $0.331; a decisive break above this level could push the price towards $0.35.