FirstRand Bank has become one of the first financial institutions in South Africa to deploy Kinexys Digital Payments, the private, permissioned blockchain network operated by Kinexys by J.P. Morgan, for programmable treasury payment transactions.
According to the official press release, the deployment enables automated, near real-time US dollar payments across the bank's treasury group outside traditional settlement windows.
The bank's treasury team has implemented Programmable Payments functionality, setting pre-defined conditions that, when met, trigger automated USD transactions between FirstRand Bank's USD-denominated Blockchain Deposit Accounts on the Kinexys network. This allows the treasury team to make intragroup payments across legal entities on a 24/7 basis, optimising liquidity management by enabling near-instant transactions based on pre-set criteria rather than being constrained by conventional banking hours or settlement cycles.
Regional significance and expansion potential
The deployment marks one of the first uses of distributed ledger technology for treasury payments by a South Africa-based bank and represents a broader signal of blockchain infrastructure gaining traction in the Sub-Saharan African financial sector. FirstRand Bank has indicated that the Kinexys implementation, currently applied to intragroup USD payments, has the potential to be extended to customer payment solutions across a wider African footprint.
Furthermore, Kinexys by J.P. Morgan is the blockchain business unit of J.P. Morgan Payments, which holds a direct clearing position in South African local payment schemes and provides a range of treasury services in the country, including liquidity management, cross-currency solutions, and virtual accounts. J.P. Morgan Payments has described Sub-Saharan Africa as central to its growth agenda.
Commenting on the news, Bhulesh Singh, Group Treasurer at FirstRand, said the bank views distributed ledger technology as central to the financial market infrastructure of the future and that the Kinexys implementation will improve the speed and efficiency of USD payments, with potential to develop broader solutions for customers across Africa.
