How J.P. Morgan is using blockchain to cut costs, speed up settlements, and unlock liquidity with Kinexys, a business that could reshape global finance.
Stablecoins are no longer just a crypto experiment. According to the Faster Payments Council, they are emerging as a critical tool to modernize payment systems, enabling instant settlement, reducing fraud, and freeing up liquidity that today remains trapped in legacy rails. For banks and asset managers, this moment represents both risk and opportunity.
Few incumbents are investing as heavily in digital settlement infrastructure as J.P. Morgan. Nelli Zaltsman, Head of Platform Settlement Solutions at Kinexys by J.P. Morgan, says the bank’s Kinexys platform is designed to bring the promise of deposit tokens and blockchain payment rails into the mainstream.
Video: Nelli Zaltsman, Head of Platform Settlement Solutions at Kinexys by J.P. Morgan.
From Faster Payments to Smart Payments
Zaltsman’s mandate is to ensure J.P. Morgan can provide institutional-grade liquidity and programmable settlement at scale. While the bank does not issue stablecoins, it is building infrastructure that allows clients to leverage blockchain for faster and smarter payments.
“Clients benefit from just-in-time funding of transactions,” Zaltsman explained. “Because it’s programmable, they don’t need to pre-fund accounts. Funds can stay in the most productive accounts until they are actually required for settlement. That creates operational savings and new efficiencies.”
This approach aligns with the Faster Payments Council’s view that stablecoins can deliver 24/7 settlement, transparency, and real-time liquidity management in ways legacy systems cannot.
Kinexys: The Blockchain Payments Engine
Kinexys, one of the world’s first bank-led blockchain platforms, serves as the umbrella for J.P. Morgan’s blockchain initiatives across payments, assets, and information. On the payments side, it includes blockchain deposit accounts and the JPMD deposit token. These tools are designed to work across multiple jurisdictions, allowing corporate treasurers to rebalance liquidity instantly between hubs such as London, New York, and Singapore.
At its core, Kinexys is about efficiency. Early clients have been able to reduce intraday borrowing by automating cash movement with programmable instructions. As Zaltsman noted, the technology can be “faster, cheaper, and smarter, and can be built with more redundancy than traditional rails.”
Bridging Digital Assets and Traditional Finance
One of the key challenges highlighted by both J.P. Morgan and the Faster Payments Council is interoperability. Payment systems today are siloed, with different standards across countries and institutions. Kinexys is working to solve this by partnering with interoperability providers such as Chainlink, enabling settlement workflows that connect seamlessly across chains.
Natalya Thakur is the CEO of Knova, an API infrastructure layer that lets financial institutions automate transactions and manage assets seamlessly across traditional and tokenized finance, and she added, “What J.P. Morgan is doing with Kinexys illustrates the market’s need for programmable, interoperable payment rails that reduce friction and unlock liquidity. We see the same demand across our clients: the ability to rebalance capital instantly across custodians, wallets, and banks, without being trapped in legacy systems. The real breakthrough is combining settlement speed with automation, transparency, and cross-asset connectivity.”
This fits the council’s perspective that financial institutions must play a bridging role, integrating stablecoins with real-time fiat payment rails like FedNow in the U.S., the Faster Payments Service in the U.K., and the New Payments Platform in Australia.
Building for Institutional Adoption
Zaltsman stressed that J.P. Morgan has deliberately positioned its products as deposit tokens rather than stablecoins, maintaining consistency from a legal and accounting standpoint. “For clients, keeping a consistent structure both legally and operationally is key,” she said.
That approach reflects industry guidance that banks focus first on tokenized deposits and custodial roles before moving into broader stablecoin issuance. Institutional trust and regulatory clarity remain essential for scaling adoption.
The Road Ahead
Looking forward, Zaltsman says the bank’s focus will be on supporting liquidity for the fast-growing real-world asset tokenization market. “It will be hard for that market to grow without optionality from a payments perspective,” she said. Kinexys is designed to provide that option.
Stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and digital wallets could be the connective tissue for the next era of faster payments. For J.P. Morgan, the ambition is clear: to ensure that its infrastructure not only keeps pace with innovation but sets the standard for how digital assets integrate with traditional finance.
For more like this on Forbes, check out How Citi Is Rethinking Digital Assets: Beyond Hype To Infrastructure and Surprising Ways The GENIUS Act Will Impact Financial Services.