Case Study
IBM World Wire is intended to make it cheap and easy for financial institutions to send any currency anywhere in the world using Stellar.
Financial institutions will integrate their existing systems with the World Wire API, send a payment through a Stellar-based bridge asset, and settle on the Stellar network.
Organization
IBM Blockchain
Industry
Cross-border payments
Location
Global
Former Vice President · IBM Blockchain
Every day, financial institutions move trillions of dollars from country to country and currency to currency using a payment system designed over 50 years ago. It’s slow, expensive, and unnecessarily complicated.
IBM World Wire will connect financial institutions to Stellar to allow simultaneous clearing and settlement of cross-border payments. It’ll be fast, safe, cheap, and available 24/7.
Regulated financial institutions will apply to join World Wire and will be vetted by IBM. Approved subscribers will connect their existing front-end interfaces to World Wire APIs to submit transactions to the Stellar network. IBM will also curate a list of Stellar-network assets, which will include both XLM and third-party-issued stablecoins, that World Wire participants can use as a bridge currency for transactions.
World Wire subscribers will transact using bridge assets, many of which will be stablecoins. Stellar makes issuing assets easy, and is the only blockchain built with stablecoins in mind.
World Wire customers will be regulated financial institutions, so they need to comply with KYC and AML requirements. By allowing issuers to control access to the assets they issue, Stellar makes compliance easy.
The Stellar Consensus Protocol prevents forks, keeping all assets on one global ledger and allowing for immediate settlement of payments.
World Wire’s planned coverage of 72 countries and 47 currencies will require a network that can handle high transaction volumes relative to other blockchains.
IBM believes an open-source standard for payments should be stewarded by a nonprofit foundation.
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