Axis Bank, one of India's largest private banks, has launched near real-time, 24/7 programmable US Dollar (USD) clearing capabilities for its business customers in India through a partnership with JP Morgan.

By partnering with Kinexys Digital Payments (KDP), JP Morgan's global provider of blockchain-based financial infrastructure, the bank’s customers can now access 24/7 cross-border payments.

Neeraj Gambhir, group executive and head- treasury, markets and wholesale banking products at Axis Bank explained that the collaboration aims to bring value to customers by simplifying payments, unlocking liquidity, and adding more options on cross-border payments by using blockchain-based payment circuits.

“We are excited to work with Kinexys by JP Morgan to deliver a first in the market – 24/7 programmable USD clearing capability for our institutional and commercial banking clients for their cross-border payments,” he added.

Naveen Mallela, global co-head of Kinexys by JP Morgan, said that Axis’ innovative mindset was “instrumental” in launching the first-of-its-kind blockchain-based payments capability to its Indian consumer and corporate client base.

“Our work with Axis Bank marks the next step in creating a growing industry-wide blockchain-based financial ecosystem with interoperability among central bank digital currencies, stablecoins and other digital currency solutions,” the global co-head added.

KDP, which first launched blockchain deposit accounts in 2019, said that they are now being used by a growing number of corporate and financial institution customers around the world to facilitate and automate on-demand, 24/7 multi-currency payment movements across borders.

Since inception, the platform has processed more than $1.5 trillion in transactions, with an average daily transaction volume on the Kinexys platform of more than $2 billion,

---