Wells Fargo, HSBC Add Offshore Yuan to Blockchain Foreign-Exchange System

The banking giants have settled over $200 billion in transactions using the blockchain-based system.

By Jamie Crawley

Nov 17, 2022 at 11:16 a.m. UTC

CDCROP: Chinese yuan money (Shutterstock) — Chinese yuan. (Shutterstock)

Jamie Crawley

Jamie Crawley is a CoinDesk news reporter based in London.

Follow @JamieCrawleyCD on Twitter

Wells Fargo (WFC) and HSBC (HSBC) expanded their blockchain-based system for settling foreign exchange transactions to include the offshore yuan.

The addition of the Chinese currency that circulates outside of the mainland marks the first expansion of the network, which uses a shared ledger to settle matched foreign-exchange transactions.

The system debuted in December 2021 with support for the U.S. dollar, British pound, euro and Canadian dollar. It has settled over $200 billion in transactions to date, the two banks announced Thursday.

The system uses HSBC proprietary technology built on Baton Systems' blockchain-inspired CORE distributed ledger technology.

Many of the world's major banks have been integrating blockchain technology into processes such as clearing and settlement in recent years. JPMorgan's Onyx network, for example, which uses tokens for short-term trading in fixed income markets, has now processed over $300 billion in volume since its inception in 2020.

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