National Australia Bank has completed an intra-bank, cross-border transaction using NAB-issued stablecoins. This represents a world-first by a major financial institution on a layer-one public blockchain (Ethereum).
The pilot transaction involved the deployment of stablecoin smart contracts for 7 major global currencies, namely Australian, New Zealand, Singapore and US dollars, Euro, Yen, and Pound Sterling. The success of this pilot transaction demonstrates a broader potential to cut cross-border transactions from days to minutes, and brings NAB one step closer to enabling clients to have a far simpler and faster experience when operating in multiple jurisdictions.
We are committed to pursuing the right digital asset opportunities with clear customer benefits. Bringing multi-currency stablecoins to market demonstrates NAB’s focus on simplifying international banking protocols to increase speed and transparency while lowering costs and reducing complexity for customers.
Disrupting the world of cross-border transactions with stablecoins
By leveraging Fireblocks (as well as BlockFold), NAB was able to strategically manage the entire lifecycle for building and deploying stablecoins — from smart contract creation to securely minting and burning its stablecoin, to the direct custody of the digital assets.
We believe that elements of the future of finance will be blockchain enabled and we’re already witnessing rapid change in the tokenisation market. The stringent governance frameworks we have in place ensures we can support the creation of a safe and reliable digital financial system.
NAB’s AUDN stablecoin, which is fully backed one-for-one with the Australian dollar, will be the cornerstone for the bank’s ambitions into the world of digital assets and future customer offerings, starting with its corporate and institutional clients. In addition, transacting on a public, permissionless layer-one blockchain allows for greater transparency, accessibility and scalability.
Fireblocks is proud to be powering NAB in their digital asset endeavors.
Australia continues to be a global torch bearer for tokenisation in financial services, with NAB leading the charge in the world’s first use case of a large financial institution leveraging a public blockchain for cross-border payment rails. NAB’s successful trade execution marks the beginning of the evolution of financial services from Web2 to Web3, underpinned by blockchain technology as well as strong governance and risk management.
