The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) has launched Digital Settlement House (LSEG DiSH), an open access digital settlement platform that enables programmatic, instant settlement across independent payment networks, spanning both on chain and traditional infrastructures.

Through commercial bank deposits held in the DiSH Cash, LSEG DiSH's ledger-based solution for commercial bank cash management, the service will enable instant transfer of commercial bank money across multiple currencies and jurisdictions aiming to provide true liquidity for foreign exchange and digital asset transactions and settlements.

With the move, LSEG seeks to address the issue of fragmentation in digital settlement by providing users with the use of LSEG DiSH to unlock blocked assets, enabling immediate use of cash, securities and digital assets 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Users will also be able to optimise liquidity through new tools that support intraday borrowing and lending, helping them better manage assets and liabilities, it said.

LSEG added that these capabilities also reduce settlement risk by shortening settlement times and enabling synchronised settlement.

Daniel Maguire, head of LSEG Markets and managing director of LCH Group, said that the service aims to expand the range of tokenised cash and cash-like solutions available in the market while offering a “real” cash solution tokenised on the blockchain using cash in multiple currencies held at commercial banks.

He added: “This innovative service will enable users to reduce settlement risk, and integrate existing cash, securities and digital assets across new and existing market infrastructure. We look forward to developing this service in partnership with the market.” 

The launch follows a collaboration with Digital Asset and a consortium of leading financial institutions to execute transactions on the Canton network, a privacy-enabled blockchain network designed for synchronised financial markets.

Executed across multiple assets and currencies, the transactions leveraged commercial bank deposits at leading commercial banks, with ownership recorded on the LSEG DiSH registry, enabling PoC participants to instantly transfer commercial bank deposits. The deposits were tokenised on the Canton Network to be used as actual cash legs of the transactions.

Recently, Kinexys by JPMorgan, the firm's industry-leading blockchain business, also announced it is set to launch its deposit token product JPM Coin natively to the Canton Network.

JPM Coin is the first USD-denominated deposit token issued by a bank, offering institutional clients the ability to make payments using a digital representation of JP Morgan's USD deposits on a public distributed ledger.

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