Today JP MorganāsĀ Takis Georgakopoulos said that six months ago, the bank saw a lot of demand from clients for cryptocurrencies as a payment method. āWe see very little right now,ā said the bankās head of payments talking toĀ BloombergĀ Ā today.
āBut we continue to support those use cases. We donāt take principal risk. But if someone wants to use their crypto as a payment method, we can support that. Just itās a niche use case, at least for now.ā
Earlier, he discussed the bankās approach to blockchain and digital currencies. He views distributed ledger as an alternative payment rail in the future.
āFor me, the most exciting thing about digital currency on a blockchain is the ability to move information and value at the same time in real-time and without any of the constraints of the traditional payment systems,ā said Georgakopoulos.
āAs you think of (the) internet of things, smart devices, mobility, etc, these are areas that would require in the future new payment methods. Thatās why weāre investing in Onyx,ā he said, referring toĀ JP MorganāsĀ in-house blockchain division.Ā
He continued, āThatās why we have our own blockchain network that can take both fiat currencies, deposit on a distributed ledger and digital currencies or CBDCs as they evolve in the future, but we have a bit of a way to go on that front.ā
Georgakopoulos also spoke aboutĀ Partior, the Singapore joint venture with DBS Bank and Temasek, which provides a multicurrency clearing network. He views it as a blueprint for other regions.
Partior grew out of theĀ Project UbinĀ central bank digital currency (CBDC) experiments with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Earlier this month, MAS unveiledĀ Project Guardian, which aims to explore securities tokenization and the use of DeFi technologies such as lending without intermediaries and automated market making (AMM) for trading. JP Morganās Onyx is involved in Project Guardian alongside DBS, Japanās SBI and Marketnode, an SGX-backed bond and fund tokenization solution.