In the JP Morgan Chase’s fourth quarter 2020 results conference call, regarding the OCC’s recent approval of banks to use stablecoins for payment, and whether this will affect the development of JP Morgan Chase’s own token, JPM Coin, Chief JP Morgan Chase Executive Officer Jamie Dimon and Chief Financial Officer Jennifer Piepszak expressed their views.
During the Q&A session of the conference call, Charles Peabody, an analyst at Portales Partners, asked about the OCC’s approval for banks to use public blockchain networks for payments.
According to call records, Jennifer Piepszak, Chief Financial Officer of JPMorgan Chase responded: “According to this guidance, stablecoins can be issued on public blockchains. So this will not affect JPM Coin. You should consider JPM Coin as us Tokenized form of customer deposits.” However, she does not rule out the possibility of using stablecoins supported by JPMorgan Chase, provided that customers show interest.
“So, obviously it’s still early. We will evaluate the use cases and customer needs. But it is too early to see where we are going.”
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, also quickly stated that JPMorgan Chase “is already using blockchain to share data with banks, so we are at the forefront, which is a good thing.”
JP Morgan Chase’s JPM Coin debuted in October 2020. It is mainly used in the backend of JP Morgan’s payment system, helping to settle nearly $6 trillion in payments every day. During the conference call, Piepszak also described the JPM Coin project as “a tokenized deposit that is easier for customers to pay.”
In the end, Dimon seems to imply that encrypted payment settlement will not have much impact on the way JP Morgan Chase operates.
“There are rumors that there are several banks that have digital currencies and things like that, right?” Dimon concluded. “So I do look forward to these things, it may not make a lot of changes in our world.”
However, Dimon may have underestimated the impact of cryptocurrency on the payment landscape.
The financial technology giant Paypal mentioned by Dimon is a major payment competitor. Paypal confirmed that its cryptocurrency payment service will be launched in 2021. Dimon was a famous cryptocurrency skeptic. He made it clear that payment will become an increasingly popular and competitive field in the next decade:
“I expect the competition in the next 10 years will be very, very fierce. I hope to win. God bless me.”
