--- title: "JPMorgan Expands Its Blockchain Settlement Network to Five Asian Currencies" description: "JPMorgan has added five Asia-Pacific currencies to Kinexys, its blockchain-based settlement platform, letting big institutions move money across borders around the clock. It's a sign the biggest banks are racing to modernize payments with their own blockchains — and to fend off stablecoins." category: "Crypto" category_url: https://boursel.com/category/crypto author: "Sofia Marchetti" published: 2026-06-29T15:43:00.000Z updated: 2026-06-29T15:43:00.000Z canonical: https://boursel.com/article/jpmorgan-expands-its-blockchain-settlement-network-to-five-asian-currencies tags: ["jpmorgan", "blockchain", "payments", "kinexys", "stablecoins", "crypto"] --- # JPMorgan Expands Its Blockchain Settlement Network to Five Asian Currencies JPMorgan has added five Asia-Pacific currencies to Kinexys, its blockchain-based settlement platform, letting big institutions move money across borders around the clock. It's a sign the biggest banks are racing to modernize payments with their own blockchains — and to fend off stablecoins. The biggest US bank is steadily turning blockchain from a buzzword into plumbing. **JPMorgan** said its blockchain unit, **Kinexys**, now supports five more currencies — the **Australian and Hong Kong dollars, the Japanese yen, the Chinese renminbi and the Singapore dollar** — adding to the US dollar, euro and British pound it already handled, [CoinDesk reported](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/06/29/j-p-morgan-broadens-blockchain-settlement-network-as-banks-modernize-cross-border-payments). Early users include the payments firm **Payoneer**, settling Australian-dollar transfers, and **JERA Global Markets**, the trading arm of Japanese energy group JERA, as the first yen client. ## What this actually is Kinexys is a **permissioned blockchain** — a private network run by JPMorgan where only vetted institutions can take part, unlike public chains such as Ethereum or Bitcoin that anyone can join. Its purpose is mundane but valuable: let institutional clients **move money, swap currencies and settle payments 24/7**, including outside banking hours and weekends. That stands in contrast to **correspondent banking**, the decades-old system in which a cross-border payment hops through a chain of intermediary banks, each adding a fee and a delay — settlement can take days. At the core of Kinexys is **JPM Coin**, a **"deposit token."** In plain terms, that's a digital claim on **real US dollars deposited at JPMorgan** — not a cryptocurrency and not a stablecoin. Moving a JPM Coin moves a bank-guaranteed dollar; JPMorgan says the platform has processed **more than $4 trillion** since launch, with average daily volume above **$7 billion** (figures per the bank, [via its Kinexys update](https://www.jpmorgan.com/payments/newsroom/kinexys-milestones-2026)). ## Why banks are doing this now Two pressures are pushing banks onto blockchains. The first is **demand** for faster, cheaper, always-on cross-border settlement from corporate treasurers and traders. The second is **competition from stablecoins** — privately issued, dollar-pegged crypto tokens that move value instantly and have grabbed enormous transaction volumes (gross on-chain figures in the tens of trillions, though those numbers are inflated by automated activity and should be read with caution). Banks would rather offer their **own, regulated** version of fast digital money than cede the business to crypto-native firms. ## The broader shift JPMorgan isn't alone. A group of large US banks — including **Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo** — is working on a shared **tokenized-deposit** network, and central banks have run cross-border blockchain-settlement experiments. The throughline is the **"tokenization of money"**: representing ordinary bank deposits as programmable tokens that can move on a blockchain. It's worth keeping the distinction Boursel has drawn before clearly in mind. **Bank blockchains** like Kinexys give clients the reliability of a regulated bank counterparty plus blockchain speed; **stablecoins** carry counterparty risk tied to an issuer's reserves and looser regulation. Both are racing to become the rails for moving money. ## Why it matters For the financial system, the significance is less about crypto prices and more about **infrastructure**: the slow, expensive machinery of cross-border payments is finally being rebuilt, and the incumbents — not just startups — are doing the rebuilding. For JPMorgan, which launched JPM Coin back in 2019, the currency expansion is a bet that **institutional demand for tokenized settlement is real and growing**. The open question is whether bank-run networks can ultimately match the cost and reach of public-blockchain and stablecoin alternatives — or whether the future of money movement ends up a blend of both. ## Sources - [JPMorgan broadens blockchain settlement network as banks modernize cross-border payments](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/06/29/j-p-morgan-broadens-blockchain-settlement-network-as-banks-modernize-cross-border-payments) - [Kinexys 2026 milestones](https://www.jpmorgan.com/payments/newsroom/kinexys-milestones-2026)