Partior Blockchain Payments Network Goes Live

Blockchain-based payments technology company Partior announced its launch on Tuesday, and it has begun operations with participating banks to achieve end-to-end settlements in SGD and USD under 2 minutes.

Founded as a joint venture between DBS bank, J.P. Morgan, and Temask Holdings, Partior was built to accelerate payments, trade and foreign exchange settlement digitally and resolve current transaction pain points with distributed ledger technology (DLT). The company was a result of Project Ubin which was a five-year experiment on the feasibility of blockchain and CBDCs for domestic clearing and settlement of payments and securities.

The Partior platform features an atomic model to replace the existing sequential approach to payments settlement that is operational 24/7 to speed up payment transactions. This reduces settlement time and removes the need for intermediaries which potentially cuts down processing time and cost.

While the platform is currently in its pilot phase, Partior is expected to enable financial institutions and developers to create applications that support FX Payment Versus Payment (PVP), Delivery Versus Payment (DVP) and Peer-to-Peer escrows to complement global financial ecosystems. The company also aims to expand service offerings to other markets and currencies, and is designed to complement ongoing Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) initiatives and use cases.

Speaking at the launch event on Tuesday, Partior’s CEO Jason Thomson believes that while there may be initial challenges to the platform’s functions as it scales up, the answer lies in lowering the barrier to adoption while maintaining governance regulations at the same time.

“We believe that we have the right independence and governance to set that up. We’ve worked very closely with our investors to ensure that’s the case. And now we’re ready to expand our reach and talk to many more organizations. What is important to us is that those organizations come with an open mind as to how we continue to build the right culture, in the product and strategy co-creation group.” said Jason during the panel discussion.

Adding on to the discussion, MAS Chief Fintech Officer Sopnendu Mohanty believes that Partior’s role as a success of Singapore’s innovation efforts allows it to bridge Singapore’s goals as a financial hub with larger developments happening outside of Singapore. By staying connected with jurisdictions outside Singapore with collaborations and partnerships, he foresees it to lead Singapore to far better success.

Touching on the need to speed up payment methods, DBS Bank Head of Global Transaction Services Lim Soon Chong states that Partior’s 24/7 infrastructure and digital asset ecosystem would be a boon for instantaneous settlement for trading.

“In the present, we have over USD100 trillion of global payments characterised by inefficient clearing and inefficient settlements. So you have got clearing, and you’ve got settlement that is sequential and you’ve clearing that is really dependent and cannot be guaranteed until sanctions screening has been completed” said Soon Chong.