Emirates NBD has launched live USD cross-border payment capabilities on the Partior blockchain payments network, making it the first bank in the Middle East, North Africa, and Türkiye (MENAT) region to offer this kind of service. J.P. Morgan is handling settlement on the back end.
What Partior actually does
Partior is a blockchain-based clearing and settlement network founded in 2021 by DBS Bank, J.P. Morgan, and Standard Chartered. Temasek and Peak XV Partners have also invested in the platform. The whole project traces its lineage back to Singapore’s Project Ubin, a central bank-backed initiative that explored how distributed ledger technology could fix the well-documented headaches of interbank settlements.
Traditional cross-border payments rely on correspondent banking relationships, batch processing windows, and a chain of intermediaries. Partior replaces that with continuous clearing and settlement on a multi-currency distributed ledger, supporting major currencies including USD, SGD, and EUR.
Emirates NBD completed its first live USD transaction on the network on October 22, 2024. J.P. Morgan serves as both the settlement bank and beneficiary bank for these transactions.
