San Francisco-based multinational financial services company, Wells Fargo & Company, today announced its plans to test an internal settlement service, Wells Fargo Digital Cash, which will run on its own DLT platform. This will allow Wells Fargo to complete internal book transfers of cross-border payments within its global network.
The official press release also highlighted that the internal DLT network will be a reusable enterprise utility for it to build and deploy multiple DLT-based applications. According to Lisa Frazier, Head of the Innovation Group at Wells Fargo,
“As a result of the increasing digitization of banking services globally, we see a growing demand to further reduce friction regarding traditional borders, and today’s technology puts us in a strong position to do that. We believe DLT holds promise for a variety of use cases, and we’re energized to take this significant step in applying the technology to banking in a material and scalable way.”
Frazier added that Wells Fargo Digital Cash has the potential to remove barriers to real-time financial interactions across multiple accounts in multiple marketplaces around the world.
The press release talks about the permanent and highly secure nature of distributed ledger technology as a trusted record of transactions. The company is confident that Wells Fargo Digital Cash will help it reach almost real-time money movement without impacting the underlying account, posting of transactions or the infrastructure for reconcilement with respect to international payments using different platforms and processes.
The proposed digital cash will enable its global offices to exchange funds during operating hours free from traditional posting infrastructure, while allowing final settlements without third-party involvement, reducing transfer time and costs.
Wells Fargo also maintained that corporate clients will not have to change their payment processes, cash management responsibilities or relationship management practices to benefit from this.
With a planned 2020 release, the proprietary internal DLT will not be connected to any other digital cash solution emerging in the financial services market today and is expected to expand from only USD transfers to global currency transfers after its launch.
