IBM has announced that it has received signed letters of intent from six international banks to embrace the IBM World Wire technology on their respective platforms to issue stable coins. World Wire is an ambitious project using the Stellar blockchain, which aims to revolutionize the global financial system.
As per their website, the World Wire project is a new financial rail which simultaneously clears and settles cross-border payments in near real-time. By integrating the technology with the existing payment systems, a user will now be able to replace costly opacity with affordable transparency.
World Wire offers many advantages over the traditional use of fiat, like accelerating payment speed which allows for simultaneous clearing and settlement by eliminating multiple middlemen and third parties processing transactions. Secondly, they shall offer lower clearing requirements, and reduced capital necessary for international payments. There are also plans to enable a single exchange rate fee between all currencies. Another benefit offered by the solution is increased transparency, with XLM’s blockchain ledger being available for public research and audit, ensuring trust among regulators and law enforcement. World Wire also enables transactions of any size.
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Three of the six institutions which agreed to partner with World Wire include Philippines-based RCBC, Brazil’s Banco Bradesco, and Bank Busan of South Korea. Details about the other banks have not been disclosed.
“So we are starting with markets that are outside of the U.S., but it won’t be long before we add the U.S. as an operating endpoint. It will be sometime this year; we will get to it, third quarter, fourth quarter something like that,” said Jesse Lund, head of the blockchain for financial services for IBM.
The blockchain also, reportedly, would allow the banks to manage Stellar Lumens (XLM) as a bridge cryptocurrency. The process would facilitate the exchange of tokens freely both within and between banks with XLM as the medium.
IBM claims that they are present in 72 countries administering 47 currencies with 44 banking endpoints. The company also has more than 1081 unique currency trading pairs.
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IBM has advanced a robust technology and a thoroughly strong reputation to become a critical player in an emerging market which is dominated by Ripple. Similarly, Stellar has showcased outstanding performance during the past couple of weeks showing bullish behavior gaining enough credibility.
