Today Partior, the DLT-based payment network, announced its first closing of its $60 million Series B funding round led by Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India & SEA) and including Valor Capital Group and Jump Trading Group. The company previously raised $31 million according to Pitchbook. The news comes just two months after announcing the appointment of new CEO, Humphrey Valenbreder.
Partior was founded by JP Morgan, DBS Bank and Temasek, with Standard Chartered joining subsequently. Its first solution is an international settlement network using tokenization, which grew out of Singapore’s Project Ubin CBDC work. The three founding settlement banks enable clients, including other banks, to send instant cross border payments 24/7.
So far it supports US dollars, Sing dollars and Euros, with plans to support numerous others. In addition to the larger currencies, it will also support Brazil’s Real and several Gulf currencies. As previously announced, clients such as Siemens and iFast Financial are using Standard Chartered for euro transactions to give them better control over liquidity.
Partior’s second planned solution is intraday FX swaps, with a recent proof of concept including two founding banks and Japan’s Mizuho. It is also planning a Programmable Enterprise Liquidity Management system. That would allow corporates to manage their liquidity in real time across several banks. Undoubtedly, that would appeal to the treasurers of large corporates. The only question is whether banks can overcome their competitive instincts to deliver it.
DLT for correspondent banking
Regarding the current settlement network, it uses DLT to bring efficiencies to cross border payments using correspondent banking. Today most payments rely on messaging, which means there is a separation between the instructions and the money movement, resulting in poor transparency and delays. Tokens merge the message and the money movement. The settlement banks, currently JP Morgan, DBS and Standard Chartered, process transactions 24/7, allowing instant payments in the jurisdictions where they operate.
“After devoting a significant part of my career to solving some of the great challenges of global payments, I have seen firsthand how essential it is for the cross-border payments and settlements infrastructure to be modernised,” said Dan Schulman, Managing Partner at Valor Capital Group and former PayPal CEO.
He continued, “Their platform’s capability to streamline cross-border payments and FX settlement introduces new standards for global, real-time clearing and settlement. It also aligns with our vision of pushing the boundaries of innovation in financial services with blockchain technology.”
It’s notable that the latest investors are non-banks, leaving the founders to dictate direction. Both Valor Capital and Jump Trading have significant cryptocurrency interests. While Partior remains institutional focused, these investors may help accelerate innovation.
Meanwhile, Partior likes to call itself a Unified Ledger, a term coined by the BIS. The BIS recently launched a project involving seven central banks, Project Agorá, which has similar aims to Partior’s settlement network – to bring correspondent banking into the tokenization age.
