One of Australia’s ‘big four’ banks says it has completed its first intra-bank cross-border transaction using its own stablecoin via Ethereum.
The transaction, part of a National Australia Bank (NAB) pilot for an AUD-backed stablecoin, involved deploying stablecoin smart contracts for seven major global currencies, showcasing the potential to shorten cross-border transactions from days to minutes.
NAB intends to issue its stablecoin under the ticker “AUDN,” which will be managed as a liability on its books. The firm further plans to enable transactions for the Australian, New Zealand, Singapore and US dollars, as well as the euro, yen and pound sterling.
Digital asset infrastructure provider Fireblocks and fintech platform Blockfold assisting with the smart contracts, direct custody of the tokens alongside minting and burning, which NAB says was issued as an ERC-20 token.
“We believe that elements of the future of finance will be blockchain enabled and we’re already witnessing rapid change in the tokenisation market,” Drew Bradford, NAB Markets Executive General Manager, said in a statement.
The bank claimed it’s the world’s first major financial institution to process a cross-border stablecoin transaction via a public Layer-1 blockchain. No transaction IDs or token contracts were provided in the press materials. Blockworks is working to learn more.
In any case, ANZ — another ‘big four’ Australian bank — became the first institution in the country to issue and conduct payment of a stablecoin linked to the nation’s dollar last year, also via Ethereum, although it wasn’t cross-border.
As well, JPMorgan alongside Singapore’s DBS Bank and others executed foreign exchange transactions using tokenized deposits — a slightly different concept to stablecoins — as part of a 2022 pilot. The group used Ethereum Layer-2 network Polygon for the trades.
A number of institutions worldwide have also leveraged Ethereum and Polygon to issue tokenized bonds.
Still, NAB considers its recent stablecoin transaction a milestone for the bank. It expects to support “select corporate and institutional clients” in transacting with digital assets by the end of the year.
Get the day’s top crypto news and insights delivered to your email every evening. Subscribe to Blockworks’ free newsletter now.
Want alpha sent directly to your inbox? Get degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance, can’t-miss tweets and more from Blockworks Research’s Daily Debrief.
Can’t wait? Get our news the fastest way possible. Join us on Telegram and follow us on Google News.
Source: https://blockworks.co/news/australian-bank-nab-stablecoin-ethereum