New firm SETL is planning to launch a multi-asset, multi-currency institutional payment and settlements infrastructure based on blockchain technology.

The company said that the system, currently in demo phase, will enable market participants to move cash and assets directly between each other, facilitating the immediate and final settlement of transactions.

The SETL platform maintains a ‘permissioned’ (rather than anonymous) distributed ledger of ownership and transaction records, simplifying the process of matching, settlement, custody, registration and transaction reporting.

SETL claimed that the permissioned element of the system had allowed speeds of up to 5,000 transactions per second in tests, expected to reach 100,000 transactions per second in an enterprise. It also means that the blockchain solution would be compatible with existing and new regulatory requirements, such as legal entity identifier (LEI) fields.

The initiative is being led by SETL COO Peter Randall, founder of the Chi-X equities trading venue, and Anthony Culligan, a hedge fund investor and CEO of Roolo, a peer-to-peer bitcoin trading site.

Randall said: “Clearing and settlement processes are fragmented, cumbersome, costly and in need of technological innovation and simplification. We are currently in discussion with a number of first tier institutions who are looking to commercialise blockchain technology. Our aim is to be platform, exchange, currency and asset agnostic. When you have agreed a transaction, SETL will be the way to simultaneously move the consideration and the asset as well as provide a ‘golden record’ of the transaction.”

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