Today New York Community Bank said it had used so-called ‘digital markers’ for blockchain-based payments. It referred to them as USDForward, which are tokenized bank account balances, similar to JPM Coin and Russia’s Sberbank settlement tokens.
It was keen to emphasize that this is not a stablecoin as a USDForward represents one-for-one money sitting in the bank account of the token holder and is used in an environment where all users have been through know your customer (KYC) compliance.
‘Forward’ is about bringing the USD forward by making it available on-chain, and is unrelated to derivatives. The announcement avoided the use of the terms ‘tokens’, tokenized cash and ‘digital currency’ highlighting the need for an accepted term for bank money that is not a stablecoin, such as a settlement token.
Last month it was announced that the Bank has invested in and partnered with Figure Technologies, which operates the Provenance Blockchain. One of Figure’s subsidiaries was recently granted a license as an Alternative Trading System (ATS). A USDForward was used to pay for secondary market transactions relating to Figure’s own stock on the Figure ATS.
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