Key takeaway: The largest banks are the biggest users of on-chain technology, while others are still in the early stages of planning. Banks and credit unions alike are off to the on-chain races, but it’s mostly the big players at the front of the pack for now. About 30% have already implemented or are piloting on-chain technology, while 15% are in early discussions about how to use the technology without the aid of outside partners. At least a quarter (25%) of national banks are currently unsure about plans for adopting and integrating on-chain technology.
Regional bankers had the largest share of respondents (43%) currently in the discussion phase of on-chain technology adoption. Only 15% of bankers said they already implemented on-chain technology or are in the piloting phase. The majority of community bankers (54%) haven’t discussed using on-chain technology, with a separate 25% saying they are in the early talking stages about on-chain adoption without outside help. Credit unions had a similar distribution of responses, with 44% saying no discussions have taken place and 24% saying their organizations are talking about how to use the technology without partners.
Save for the largest institutions, most banks and credit unions are still hashing out what an on-chain technology adoption plan could look like. This is in part due to an evolving regulatory landscape surrounding the industry, as well as the costs associated with building the framework for supporting these tools. Since the start of this year, JPMorganChase has been working to broaden the stance of its blockchain unit Kinexys. Kara Kennedy, global co-head of the bank’s blockchain unit and overseer of Kinexys Digital Assets, told American Banker that the bank recently conducted pilots for uses such as tokenizing traditional assets as collateral in B2B financing and securities.
This effort builds off progress from late last year, when the bank launched My Onchain Net Yield Fund for the publicly-available Ethereum blockchain. MONY is a private placement fund allowing investors to earn U.S. dollar yields through a subscription with Morgan Money, which is the bank’s open architecture trading and analytics platform for liquidity management. “This is enabling our next phase, which is to be active in public blockchains,” Kennedy said. For individual consumer products, cross-border payments and remittances (43%) was the top on-chain technology use case either currently enabled, piloted or planned to launch within the next 12 months.
Loyalty programs and programmable payments or smart contracts were close behind, at 33%, followed by custodianship of public digital assets (30%) and tokenization of deposits (30%). Exchange services was the capability that more than half of respondents (53%) said were not being discussed, decided not to offer or were unsure about. There’s been a recent surge in interest following the growth in popularity of stablecoins and other digital assets. In September of last year, the Singapore-based technology giant Ant International finalized its first nearly instant U.S. dollar-to-euro-foreign exchange payment in Asia through JPMorganChase’s blockchain unit Kinexys.
“Near-instant on-chain FX cross-border payments through Kinexys Digital Payments provide businesses with uninterrupted access to liquidity across selected global currencies, enabling them to conduct transactions outside of designated market hours and beyond the limitations of traditional market cutoff times,” a JPMorganChase spokesperson told American Banker in an email. Cross-border payments rails (41%) was the top on-chain technology use case currently enabled, piloted or planned for launch within the next 12 months. Payout and disbursement rails (37%), merchant payments (34%), wholesale payments (34%) and tokenization of deposits (30%) were other top use cases for business clients. Reserve management was the capability that more than half of respondents (60%) said was not being discussed, decided not to offer or were unsure about.
National bankers are the most eager to issue stablecoins, while community banks and credit unions are the least likely. More than half (54%) of national bank respondents expect their bank to issue a publicly-accessible stablecoin within the next 10 years, while 41% said it wasn’t likely and 5% were unsure of their institution’s path forward with issuing a stablecoin. Roughly 40% of respondents expect to issue a stablecoin, while 45% don’t and 15% were unsure. Community banks and credit unions were the group mostly opposed to issuing stablecoins, with only 31% planning to do so in the next 10 years and 58% planning not to. Ten percent were unsure.
Regulators continue to iron out a possible regulatory framework for stablecoin issuers, with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency proposing an outline for capital and other requirements for payment stablecoin issuers under the GENIUS Act last month. The proposal drills down on licensing, operational and reserve requirements, governance, transparency, risk management and capital adequacy, all with the aim of furthering innovation in the space under the watchful purview of the federal government. “The OCC has given thoughtful consideration to a proposed regulatory framework in which the stablecoin industry can flourish in a safe and sound manner,” said Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan V. Gould. In the wake of these developments, Mastercard announced plans to purchase stablecoin tech development firm BVNK for roughly $1.8 billion, which includes $300 million in contingent payments.
The acquisition is part of the card network’s broader play to establish a stablecoin network which features other efforts like the Mastercard Crypto Partner Program. The acquisition will see BVNK integrate its tools into Mastercard’s network spanning over 200 countries and featuring existing partnerships with banks, payment processors, fintechs, acquirers, and issuers. “This partnership matters far beyond BVNK and Mastercard. … It signals a fundamental shift: stablecoins are no longer an experiment, they’re becoming the base layer for how the world moves money,” Jesse Hemson Struthers, chief executive and co-founder of BVNK, said in a post on the firm’s site.
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