CLS provides critical plumbing to the foreign exchange, or forex, markets. Founded in 2002, it mitigates settlement risk for participating banks with a “payment versus payment” service, in which both sides of a trade are completed at the same time. But its new platform aims to solve current issues in the forex market, such as a lack of standardisation and automation.
The now-live CLSNet works for over 120 fiat currencies and is designed to standardise and increase the level of payment netting in the foreign exchange market. It was developed in collaboration with buy-side and sell-side institutions. At the same time, the platform supports compliance with a code of conduct for the foreign exchange markets that CLS helped to develop, the company stated.
Investment banking Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are the first companies to use the newly launched CLSNet, with six more participants from North America, Europe and Asia, including Bank of China (Hong Kong), committed to joining in the next few months, according to CLS and IBM.
CLS and IBM developed CLSNet on the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain. But CLS has been experimenting with blockchain technology since early 2015, before the Hyperledger consortium started.
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