Financial giant Wells Fargo is developing a U.S. dollar-linked stablecoin called Wells Fargo Digital Cash that is expected to run on its own dedicated distributed ledger platform.
The digital token will be used to settle internal cross-border payments across Wells Fargo’s global network and also enable its country offices to move funds between each other using the token, Wells Fargo said in a statement.
“When we move money across the world and we need to exchange currencies, we have to go through third parties such as SWIFT and other banks,” said Lisa Frazier, head of the Innovation Group at Wells Fargo.
“That’s a long process and every time there’s a connection with external parties, it takes time and energy and effort.”
The concept will undergo a pilot for internal transfers in 2020, according to the bank, with a possibility for multiple applications to use the platform in the future.
Wells Fargo will be the second U.S. financial institution after JPMorgan Chase to launch a digital currency.
Facebook’s Libra digital currency is also set for release in the second half of 2020 despite drawing scorn from jurisdictions across the world.
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