IBM Announces Stellar-Based World Wire Payments Network

IT giant IBM has announced IBM Blockchain World Wire, which is a Stellar-based payments network targeted at financial institutions. IBM says World Wire is “the first blockchain network of its kind to integrate payment messaging, clearing and settlement on a single unified network”.

The company outlines cross-border payments, foreign exchange and remittances as the primary use cases for World Wire. So far, IBM says the service supports 72 countries, 47 currencies and 44 banking endpoints.

For now, settlements can be completed through either Stellar Lumens XLM, 3.77% or the Stronghold USD dollar-pegged stablecoin. IBM says six international banks will issue additional stablecoins pegged to other currencies.

Banks will be issuing stablecoins on Stellar
The company has already revealed three of the six banks - Banco Bradesco of Brazil, Bank Busan of South Korea, and Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) of the Philippines. The six banks will be creating Stellar-based stablecoins for the Euro, Indonesian Rupiah, Philippine Peso, Korean Won and Brazilian Real.

In its initial stage, World Wire will not support the U.S. market, instead focusing on the Europe and Asia-Pacific regions. IBM blockchain head Jesse Lund told CoinDesk that the company is planning to bring World Wire to the U.S. market in the second half of 2019. Lund also told the publication that joining the World Wire network is free for financial institutions, although they will have to pay fees on the money they move through the service.

“That’s how we maintain our revenue for supporting the network and so that alone is an entirely new way of engaging the financial services industry that IBM has never done before.”

The announcement has had a positive, although certainly not earth-shaking, impact on the XLM market. At the time of writing, XLM is the best daily performer in the crypto top 10, gaining 5% in the last 24 hours to trade at around $0.115.