Banking giant JPMorgan wants to build its own “regulated, interoperable digital money” that can move almost instantaneously and securely across financial markets, a bank spokesperson told CoinDesk.
JPMorgan is already moving ahead with plans to expand its JPM Coin deposit token beyond Base, the Ethereum Layer 2 network built by Coinbase, to Digital Asset’s privacy-focused Canton Network and eventually to additional blockchain platforms – as it strives for a more interconnected, multichain settlement system for institutional payments.
“As part of the company’s broader plan to issue JPM Coin on multiple blockchain networks, bringing JPM Coin natively to Canton, this lays the foundation for regulated, interoperable digital money,” the spokesperson said. “With the native availability of JPM Coin, institutions using Canton can receive, transfer and redeem JPMD almost instantly within a secure and synchronized ecosystem.”
The JPM Coin is a deposit token. It represents US dollar deposits held at JP Morgan and allows institutional clients to make payments using a digital token on distributed ledgers.
The bank declined to detail specific legal or regulatory hurdles surrounding the issuance of JPM Coin on the public blockchain infrastructure, but noted that “any expansion is subject to internal review, risk management and regulatory approval, as appropriate.”
JPM Coin is currently available to JPMorgan institutional clients on Base. The bank said it will enable secure, near-instant transfers of value on public blockchain infrastructure, but only to whitelisted wallet addresses managed by institutional clients, ensuring compliance and control.
Unlike existing private systems, JPM Coin is not built on JPMorgan’s Kinexys network. “JPM Coin has never been offered on private, authorized infrastructure,” the spokesperson said. Instead, JPMorgan’s separate Kinexys Digital Payments network, which launched in 2019, offers Blockchain Deposit Accounts for institutional clients to make 24/7 cross-border currency (FX) payments in USD, EUR and GBP.
“For example, Siemens leverages its Blockchain deposit accounts in Frankfurt and New York to make almost instantaneous cross-border USD-to-EUR FX payments through Kinexys Digital Payments,” the bank said. “This will enable Siemens’ global operations to overcome limited settlement windows, further improving the efficiency and reliability of cross-border multi-currency payments and liquidity management within the treasury platform.”
JPM Coin, on the other hand, works entirely on public blockchain rails as a deposit token. When customers send or receive the token, a digital representation of the bank deposit is recorded directly on-chain.
Looking ahead, the JPMorgan spokesperson said it plans to support additional currencies and expand JPM Coin issuance to both public blockchain networks and the private Kinexys Digital Assets infrastructure. This would bring together the company’s cash solutions across both private and public systems.
“Just as we did with Blockchain Deposit Accounts on Kinexys, we will expand the currencies offered to institutional clients with JPM Coin over time,” the spokesperson told CoinDesk. “By offering more currencies and bringing JPM Coin to other blockchains, we can further increase efficiency and unlock liquidity.”