Paxos has filed to convert its New York Department of Financial Services trust charter into a national trust charter under the supervision of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. This would not change the company’s business model but would place it under federal oversight, “maintaining the highest global standards for safety and transparency,” says a statement. Paxos – which provides blockchain and stablecoin infrastructure and is behind PayPal’s PYUSD – first applied for a national trust bank charter in 2020, receiving preliminary approval from the OCC before the application eventually expired. It is now making a second bid in a more favourable US environment for crypto firms and stablecoins in particular, that has already seen Circle and Ripple apply for charters in recent months. Charles Cascarilla, CEO, Paxos, says: “By applying for a national trust bank charter, we are continuing to offer enterprise partners and consumers the safest, most trusted infrastructure available.”
Citi’s Token Services enable real-time cross-border payments and trade settlement through clients’ existing methods without requiring them to hold tokens via API or online portal
Citi’s treasury and trade solutions customers were asking for multinational cash management and trade services available 24/7 and that’s where Citi Token Services was born. “The pain point was our clients wanted 24/7, always on, liquidity and payments,” said Ryan Rugg, Citi’s global head of digital assets, treasury and trade solutions. Ambrish Bansal, Citi’s global head of liquidity and cash concentration solutions, liquidity management services in the bank’s treasury and trade solutions unit, said the initiative stemmed from clients’ requests. “It’s really important for us to ensure that our clients can leverage cutting-edge technologies and new developments and move their treasury management into the real-time world,” Bansal said. “The whole idea behind Citi Token Services was born out of this pressing need by our clients to ensure that their money can move around the global ecosystem in as [close to] real time as possible.” The bank uses a private permissioned distributed ledger and a distributed database with embedded business logic to enable a range of services from intraday lending, cross-border payments and conditional transfer of funds to supply chain financing, trade settlements and fractional ownership to identity verification and know-your-customer compliance. Citi Token Services adheres to the ERC-20 technical standard — a community-created framework for creating smart contract-enabled fungible tokens on the ethereum blockchain. The bank owns and manages all the blockchain technology infrastructure it’s using for its token services, which will be integrated into the bank’s global network. Clients will be able to access Citi Token Services through its CitiDirect online portal or API connectivity. Rugg said multinational companies with hundreds, if not thousands, of accounts with Citi and other banks can use the program to manage liquidity and payments across the globe. Before, they would have to forecast and leave money in different branches as well as keep track of cut-off times and holidays around the world when money can’t be moved.
R3 to bridge Corda with Solana’s network to enable regulated FIs to access public blockchain infrastructure for RWA tokenization through enterprise-grade, compliant service
R3 and Solana Foundation have partnered to bring regulated real-world assets onto a public blockchain. The collaboration will create a consensus service deployed on Solana to enable native interoperability between R3’s existing Corda platform – as well as other private networks – and Solana, bridging the gap between permissioned and public blockchain ecosystems for the first time. This will enable regulated financial institutions – including banks, financial market infrastructure providers, and asset managers – to fully harness the openness and efficiency of Solana without re-writing their applications or compromising on compliance, security, or asset control. It drives institutional adoption of public blockchain networks, capitalizing on greater regulatory clarity and growing institutional demand for tokenized real-world assets (RWAs). The announcement marks new strategic direction for R3, signalling its leadership in driving the convergence of public and private networks to unlock the next era of internet capital markets. It enables regulated financial institutions to directly access the speed and scale of Solana for broader asset distribution, enhanced liquidity, and a decisive step in bringing TradFi to DeFi.