One of the major banks in the Philippines—UnionBank, launched its very own stablecoin dubbed as PHX and was considered the first bank in the country to pilot a blockchain technology-based remittance. UnionBank of the Philippines is among the country’s top 10 banks and is owned and operated by Aboitiz Equity Ventures—a Philippine holding company that operates in sectors of consumer goods, utilities, financials, and industrials.
A stablecoin is defined as a cryptocurrency that is pegged to another stable asset like gold or fiat currency, which aims to minimize volatility compared with other cryptocurrencies.
The stablecoin dubbed as PHX is pegged to the Philippines Peso (PHP).
As per the report from PhilStar, the value of PHX is bank-backed and guaranteed to be always at par with the Philippine peso. “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,” said Union Bank’s senior vice president and Fintech Business Group head Arvie de Vera.
PhilStar’s report furthered that the transactions with this stablecoin were implemented on the i2i platform that connects listed banks to rural banks. Project i2i, which stands for island-to-island, institution-to-institution, and individual-to-individual, is UnionBank’s blockchain initiative that is aimed to bring millions of unbanked Filipinos to the financial system by connecting rural banks to the country’s main financial network.
This project is introduced by UnionBank and ConsenSys—a company on global blockchain technology that builds the infrastructure, applications, and practices that enable a decentralized world through an open ethereum network.
John Lilic, Solutions Advisory Partner of ConsenSys, mentioned in the Youtube video uploaded by ConsenSysMedia that “[The rural banks] can use Ethereum to ensure transactions have a high degree of integrity and so we make the whole process much more efficient and less prone to errors.” He furthered that, “Consequently, it’s very easy for rural banks to plug in and get connected, and now they have a settlement in clearing system that actually works.”
On July 23 of this year, it was announced in a press release that the company has successfully piloted a blockchain-based remittance with the use of UnionBank’s PHX crypto from Singapore to the Philippines.
According to the press release, this was made possible in partnership with Singapore’s longest established local bank known as OCBC Bank Singapore, using the Adhara liquidity management and international payments platform.
It furthered that on June 27, “UnionBank used a blockchain-based token fiat to successfully remit from OCBC Bank in Singapore to an account holder at Cantilan Bank, a rural bank in Surigao Del sur.” It was added that “This was made possible by combining the features of both the Adhara platform and UnionBank-UBX’s i2i platform.”
Just in February of this year, UnionBank made its first engagement in cryptocurrency through the launch of the first-ever cryptocurrency ATM in the Philippines.
