7 October 2022
Philippines’ UnionBank Unveiled Its Stablecoin
Philippines Union Bank has released its cryptocurrency named as PHX which will connect rural banks through its blockchain platform.
The report states that PHX is already applied on the bank’s i2i blockchain platform.
Arvie de Vera, UnionBank Senior Vice President and Head of the Fintech Business Group, said, “PHX is a stable store of value, medium of exchange and is a programmable token with self-executing logic. It enables transparent and automatic execution of payments.”
As a testing process, the three rural banks associated with Union Bank have successfully conducted live transactions, that include buying, transferring, purchasing, and redeeming transactions and domestic remittances through the bank’s blockchain technology. The three banks participated were Summit Rural Bank in Luzon, the Progressive Bank in the Visayas, and the Cantilan Bank in Mindanao.
Even the participants of the i2i blockchain platform in the initial stage could buy PHX by making direct debits from their accounts in UnionBank. It will become easy for i2i users to convert PHX to PHP and withdraw the funds in fiat to bank accounts.
This new platform will eliminate the issue of the governance and past reconciliation challenges because of which the compliance and audit are now made simpler. The design of PHX is interoperable that makes it possible to use different wallets and platforms on a global level.
This project named i2i that means island-to-island, institution-to-institution, and individual-to-individual is a clearing system of UnionBank that connects rural banks through blockchain. Till now five rural banks have used the i2i.
The Aboitiz-led bank made history by becoming the country’s first financial institution which was successful in using blockchain-based remittance from Singapore to the Philippines via its partnership with OCBC Bank.