jpmorgan chase  co has tied up with six indian banks to introduce a blockchainbased platform to settle interbank dollar transactions in the nation’s newest international financial hub “we will be running a pilot project for the next few months as we need to analyze banks’ experience” kaustubh kulkarni senior country officer india and vice chairman asia pacific at jpmorgan said in an interview the banks include top private lenders like hdfc bank ltd icici bank ltd axis bank ltd yes bank ltd and indusind bank ltd in addition to jpmorgan’s own banking unit at gift city he said the move will provide a further fillip to new delhi’s attempt to position the gujarat international finance teccity or gift city as an alternative trading center to singapore and dubai the reserve bank of india has started a domestic nondeliverable forward market settled in dollars at gift city under the existing settlement system it could take a few hours for the settlement to complete moreover transactions are not settled on saturdays and sundays or public holidays the realtime blockchainbacked system will remove this hindrance to make it available roundtheclock “by leveraging blockchain technology to facilitate transactions on a 24x7 basis processing is instantaneous and enables gift city banks to support their own timezone and operating hours” said kulkarni the pilot project will be launched on monday using jpmorgan’s blockchain platform onyx after approval from the international financial services center authority onyx jpmorgan’s blockchainbased platform for wholesale payment transactions was formed in 2020