Visa and JPMorgan link their blockchains to make international payments easier

Two giants of traditional finance, JPMorgan and Visa, are linking up their global private blockchains – Liink and B2B Connect – to simplify payments between nations.

As Forbes reported, JPMorgan’s Liink is a network specifically designed for cross-border transfers and is offered under the bank’s blockchain and payments initiative, Onyx. Onyx provides a platform for institutions to share financial information and validate transactions.

Visa’s B2B Connect is a similar network to Liink that was built for institutional grade use and has now been integrated with Onyx’s Confirm.

Confirm is an account-information validation product, and ensures that transacting parties provide genuine identities and correct information. Onyx touts that Confirm is capable of verifying more than 2 billion bank accounts from 3,500 financial institutions.

Finextra reported on Oct. 11 that JPMorgan is looking to rope in a host of founding member banks across the globe as it works to launch Confirm in 10 countries by the end of this year. Moving forward, the bank is said to be eying a rollout in 30 countries next year.

Confirm allows institutions to safely validate account information before sending a payment, ensuring fewer payment returns due to missing or incorrect information, and mitigating fraudulent activity by pre-validating account information so participants know beforehand if the instructed beneficiary matches the owner of the account they are paying.

JPMorgan launched Confirm in pilot mode last year and has just signed Deutsche Bank as a founding member for the product in EMEA. The US bank is looking to recruit founding member banks across Apac, Latam, and NAMR to grow its coverage to span over 35000 banks and more than two billion accounts.

Alex Littleton, global head of Confirm, says: “Confirm’s growth is heavily influenced by network effects. Therefore, naming Deutsche Bank as a founding member, while also establishing interconnectivity to Visa B2B’s blockchain, will accelerate our adoption on a global scale.”