Wells Fargo & Company, the renowned American MNC offering financial services, announced its plans of unveiling its own blockchain-powered digital currency for easy movement of cash between its branches and across borders in real-time. The currency in question referred to as ‘Wells Fargo Digital Cash’, will be tied to the United States Dollar. The company shared this update with the detailed information through an official press release dated 17th September 2019.
As noted in the press release, the company will transfer the digital currency utilizing its first-ever DLT (distributed ledger technology) platform. The platform will help monitor the payments that take place within the company’s internal network. Thanks to this advanced system, the company will be able to bypass 3rd parties involved in the process of asset transfers which will significantly save the transfer time as well as transaction costs, explained Lisa Frazier, Wells Fargo’s Innovation Group head.
Frazier was further quoted saying,
We believe DLT holds promise for a variety of use cases, and we’re energized to take this significant step in applying the technology to banking in a material and scalable way. Wells Fargo Digital Cash has the potential to enable Wells Fargo to remove barriers to real-time financial interactions across multiple accounts in multiple marketplaces around the world.
Advertisement
According to the announcement, the company’s digital cash will help the firm carry out internal book transfers of global payments within its international network. In fact, those global locations will also be able to exchange such digitized cash among themselves. The announcement also revealed that Wells Fargo & Company has already successfully tested the money transfer concept between Canada and the US.
In addition to that, this internal DLT network would be a reusable utility for the company to develop, as well as deploy, multiple apps based on DLT.
As the Wells Fargo Digital Cash will be running on DLT, Wells Fargo will be able to attain nearly real-time movement of money without causing any impact on transaction postings, underlying account, or the reconcilement infrastructure with global transactions wherein both processes and platforms tend to differ.
Another plus point, as Wells Fargo highlights, is the capability of exchanging funds in extended operating hours minus any restrictions with regards to conventional posting or network infrastructure. At the same time, the company’s corporate clientele is not required to make any changes to their current payment process, relationship or cash management responsibility and practice.
Advertisement
The pilot is set for a 2020 launch. Although the company initially focuses on USD transfers, the long-term aim is to scale up to the multicurrency transfers. The internal network of DLT is proprietary; it won’t be linked to other such solutions surfacing in the market, states the announcement.
