Today DLT payments network Partior confirmed that Deutsche Bank participated in its Series B extension round, bringing total funds raised to $80 million. Partior was co-founded by DBS Bank, JP Morgan, Standard Chartered and Temasek. Its first Series B closing in July was for $60m led by Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India & SEA) and including new investors Valor Capital Group and Jump Trading Group alongside some existing backers.
We reported that Deutsche Bank was likely to join Partior 18 months ago. It plans to act as a Partior settlement bank for euros and dollars.
Partior is a DLT based international settlement network that supports the correspondent banking model. A key difference to conventional payments is the international network operates 24/7 enabling real time payments. With compliance performed upfront, and DLT directly moving money (rather than messages), once the money is sent, it’s guaranteed to arrive at the other end almost instantly.
It’s a very similar model to the BIS Project Agorá, although central banks support the settlement between correspondent banks. Partior has the advantage that it’s already live.
Other single bank tokenized deposit solutions enable their corporate treasury clients to move money around the world 24/7. But most large enterprise don’t rely on a single bank. The advantage of Partior is it enables payments between banks so would support more comprehensive treasury management as the number of participant banks grows.
Partior hosts the largest Euro and USD clearers
“Deutsche Bank, as the largest EUR clearer, is excited to be a leader in this revolution and harness cutting-edge technology to enhance the speed, transparency, and security of payments expected by clients and peers alike,” said Patricia Sullivan, Global Head Institutional Cash Management, Deutsche Bank.
JP Morgan is the largest US dollar settlement bank. According to Swift data, the dollar and euro account for 71.7% of cross border payments, excluding payments between Eurozone countries. So far the Partior platform is live with USD, EUR, and SGD, with ten other currencies planned.
It recently announced a collaboration with Emirates NBD which could potentially become a settlement bank for the UAE Dirham, Saudi Riyal and Indian Rupee, and a participant bank for other currencies. Our sources reported SMBC was planning to join Partior around the same that we wrote about Deutsche Bank last year. Mizuho took part in recent FX PvP trials. Either one could provide Yen settlement. One of Partior’s investors, Valor Capital, has strong ties in Latin America.
Partior also confirmed it has surpassed $1 billion in transactions on the network. That doesn’t sound huge for international payments, but the network is still very young. For example, Standard Chartered executed its first euro payment on the network in the middle of this year. JP Morgan made its first transaction about a year ago. Given it’s a network, the payments only scale as more banks join. The founders launched the company in 2021.
The network also plans other solutions beyond cross border payments, including FX payment versus payment and intraday FX swaps.
Meanwhile, Ledger Insights explores cross border payments and FX as a core part of a new report on bank stablecoin, tokenized deposits and DLT payments.
