More than 75 of the world's biggest banks join the JPMorgan, RBC, and ANZ alliance, which is testing blockchain tech for faster payments among its members
More than 75 of the world's biggest banks are turning to blockchain to fight the threat of new payments rivals in what will be the …
Context & Ripple Effects
This alliance has been scaling for years: JPMorgan launched the underlying blockchain payment processing network with ANZ and RBC in October 2017, after earlier, smaller consortium attempts — the nine-bank R3 framework of 2015 and the Bank of America–Santander–RBC ledger built on Ripple's technology in 2016 — established that banks would pool money-movement infrastructure rather than build it alone.
The jump to more than 75 members turns what was a three-bank pilot into one of the largest bank-operated blockchain networks, and it lands just as the experiment phase gives way to official-sector involvement: JPMorgan and Visa joined the BIS's Project Agora in September 2024 to overhaul cross-border payments at the central-bank level.
First-order effects
- Member banks can settle payments between each other faster than over legacy correspondent rails, giving the founding trio — JPMorgan, RBC, and ANZ — a network whose value grows with every bank that signs on.
Second-order effects
- Banks outside the alliance now face a choice between joining a competitor-controlled network or ceding payment speed to members, while rival ledger projects like the Ripple-based network backed by Bank of America and Santander compete for the same membership pool.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — private consortia first, then the BIS's Project Agora — cross-border settlement consolidates around shared-ledger utilities co-governed by the biggest banks, shrinking the role of bilateral correspondent relationships and raising questions about who sets the rules on programmable money.
The trend: Bank payment infrastructure is consolidating from bilateral correspondent banking into shared-blockchain consortia, with scale tipping from pilots toward industry-wide utilities.