As reported earlier, Blockchain World Wire (BWW), the cross-border payment solution of IBM, was established in September 2018 in cooperation with Stellar (XLM). BWW, which has gone live with more than 44 banks on service, intends to harness cryptos to facilitate global settlements between financial institutions in near-real-time.
Cheddar has pointed out that six banks have affirmed their intentions of issuing BWW stablecoins supported by their domestic fiat currencies— including the Bank of Brazil, the Busan bank of South Korea, and the Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation of the Philippines. Other banks, as yet unreported, will supposedly issue Euro and Indonesian rupiah-backed stablecoins, among others, revealed Jesse Lund who leads IBM’s blockchain solutions.
Before the stablecoin announcement was made by bank, IBM had also collaborated with Stronghold, a USD – pegged, Stellar – based asset, to develop the very first stablecoin for the Stellar network. Lund said IBM intends to expand with additional assets its blockchain – driven payment network.
Lund said:
“We let the market drive the expansion and selection of the network incrementally. We are really feeling excited that we are on a roll to build something new and revolutionary that’s really going to change the landscape of cross-border payments.”
By introducing the XLM token as an efficient, immutably tracked settlement instrument for fiat currencies between institutional parties, it disintermediates legacy bank settlement systems. By promoting the XLM token as an effective, unalterable monitored payment vehicle for fiat money between institutions, it removes conventional bank settlement systems. As Lund pointed out in a conversation earlier this week, IBM is not involved in issuing the settlement asset selected between parties:
“Our view for stablecoins is really that they should be more broadly accessible and what World Wire seeks to do is to provide fungibility of digital assets across financial institutions.”