The Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) is one step closer to issuing its own CBDC. Bahrain ABC Bank (Bahrain Arab Banking Corporation) in partnership with The Central Bank of Bahrain have piloted their first ever cross border transfer using blockchain technology (JP Morgan Coin) . This comes after completing the central bank digital currency (CBDC) test by JP Morgan,
His excellency the Governor of the Central Bank of Bahrain said during the pilot “We at the Central Bank of Bahrain are extremely pleased to announce the success of this test which aligns with our vision and strategy to continually develop and enrich the capabilities extended to the stakeholders within our financial services sector in the Kingdom using advanced and leading emerging technologies. Through our work with ALBA, Bank ABC and Onyx by J.P. Morgan, we aspire to address and eliminate the inefficiencies and pain-points which exist today in the traditional cross-border payments arena.” After successful testing, the pilot transaction was done under the leadership of the CBB.
Successful Transfer
ABC Bank in collaboration with the leading aluminum company in the world, Alba, completed a first of a kind cross border transaction powered by JP Morgan’s blockchain platform Onyx. Being the first in the region to perform such a transaction,
Sael Al Waery, Vice President of ABC Bank in Bahrain told SkyNews Arabia, ” We have taken a solid step towards the digital transformation of the region’s financial ecosystem The transaction took only 48 seconds to complete between Bank ABC and Alba in the USA using JP Morgan’s Blockchain platform, compared to 24 hours it usually takes for payments to be processed.”
The vice chairman, wholesale payments at JP Morgan Ali Moosa commended the cooperation between the corporates “We at J.P. Morgan are proud of our close collaboration with Bank ABC and Alba (the leading Aluminium company in the world) to execute the first cross border dollar transaction using Blockchain based JPMCoin Account powered by JPM’s Onyx. This is first of its kind in terms of real-time payment benefiting a large Corporate in Bahrain and their counterpart in the United State !! Thank you to the Central Bank of Bahrain Governor H.E. Rasheed Al Maraj, Alba CEO Mr. Ali Al-Baqali, Bank ABC’s Deputy Group CEO Mr. Sael Al Waary, Group Head of Innovation Dr. Yousif Almas, The Central Bank of Bahrain Head of Innovation Ms. Yasmeen Al Sharaf and JPM’s Global Head of Digital Naveen Mallela, JPM’s Executive Director Mohamed Albanna for making this unique innovative solution possible !!”