Today Tassat Group announced its private blockchain payment technology will be used by Glasstower Digital for cross border B2B payments. What’s novel about the deal is these are not bank-based payments. Instead Glasstower Digital will use tokenized money market funds for corporate payments.
The goal is to enable real time transactions and settlement. What’s interesting about the concept is it entirely sidesteps all the challenges with legacy payment systems or even tokenized deposit payments.
At the end of the day, corporate treasurers want instant, low cost payments with added value functionality. The plumbing is less relevant to them. However, it raises several regulatory questions which we’ve addressed to Glasstower, but didn’t receive a response in time for publication. In January Glasstower Digital signed a deal with Argent Institutional Trust Company to act as custodian.
Glasstower’s target customers are multinationals, international charities, global professional services firms and financial institutions. Its CEO and founder Keith Styrcula previously specialized in structured products and has worked for several larges banks including JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, Societe Generale CIB and Scotiabank.
On his LinkedIn profile he says Glasstower is working with a top five global asset manager. The top five asset managers are BlackRock, Vanguard, Fidelity, UBS and State Street.
Tassat systems have processed more blockchain payments than JP Morgan
Meanwhile, Tassat provides a proven payment system that uses a permissioned blockchain. Its solution is used by several regional banks, including Cogent, Customers, and Western Alliance, and has processed $1.8 trillion in transactions to date. Putting that in context, JP Morgan’s JPM Coin has processed around $1 trillion so far.
These single-bank TassatPay solutions enable the banks to support 24/7 payments. Last year, Signature Bank shut down, resulting in the loss of one of Tassat’s highest-profile customers. Tassat also launched the Digital Interbank Network (DIN) for payments. However, given regulator headwinds for banks adopting DLT, it’s coy about its status.
Tassat is a project contributor to the recently announced Regulated Settlement Network initiative that includes many of the biggest banks in the United States.
