Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, IBM Launch CLS Payment Blockchain
After two years of development, adjustments, and improvements, the CLS trading utility collaborating with several large global banks is beginning to use its CLSNet – a blockchain-powered payment service.
Members from around the world
Apart from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, who have begun first to use this newly released system, there are other six participants from Asia, North America and Europe, among them Bank of China (Hong Kong). All of them intend to step in within the nearest term, as per IBM and CLS.
The head of technological development at CLS, Ram Komarraju, has shared in a recent interview that the CLSNet is ready and is already working. As per him, the first transactions have already been made and all the counterparties have received a report.
IBM is deeply into ‘blockchainizing’ things
The world-famous giant has been seriously into DLT technology this year. Earlier this fall, it released the IBM Food Trust to be used for tracking the delivery of food products via DLT. Back in early summer, the company launched an online financial company, we.trade. CLSNet is the third platform that IBM has made based on open ledger technology in 2018.
Among the numerous blockchain-based projects launched this year, only a few have got going and well-implemented with important participants, and IBM’s projects are among those.
At IBM, they believe that given the fact that two major world banks are participating, CLSNet will be a test to the maturity of the DLT which will demonstrate big players what it can actually offer in practice.
CLS and its global partners
Initially, the company dealt with forex markets. It works with mitigating settlement risks for banks that trade forex. Recently, it has begun solving problems these trading companies face with automation and standardization.
As for its collaboration with IBM, they created CLSNet based on the Hyperledger Fabric network. Actually, CLS has been doing experiments with DLT even before Hyperledger appeared, i.e. since 2015.
Apart from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, among the members of CLSNet are also Bank of China, Citibank, Bank Mitsubishi UFJ, Bank of America and JPMorgan.
In May of this year, CLS made a large investment into another blockchain vendor – R3.