Bank of Canada, JPMorgan trialing debt issuance blockchain platform

According to Reuters, Canada’s central bank has been working closely with leading financial corporation JPMorgan to create a new blockchain platform that looks to improve existing techniques surrounding debt issuance in the financial industry.

The technology, developed in-house by JPMorgan using open source blockchain development platform Quorum, looks to reduce the complications with financial transactions such as interest rate payments.

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“Blockchain-related technologies have the potential to bring about major change in the financial services industry,” said David Furlong, SVP of Artificial Intelligence, Venture Capital and Blockchain at National Bank of Canada, according to Reuters.

Off the back of these trials with the Bank of Canada, other companies including the fund management arm of Goldman Sachs and Pfizer have also begun to work with JPMorgan to test the technology.

As a result of the high levels of interest, the company is allegedly considering spinning off the business into a separate division, with the company also looking to appoint more of its own employees who are versed with blockchain to its Quorum team in order to support this demand.

The news comes just months after the Canadian central bank itself began reviewing the possibility of issuing a central bank cryptocurrency.