Why IBM Built World Wire
In March 2019, IBM announced the launch on World Wire, a real-time global payment system built on the Stellar Network.
This is big news. World Wire links the regulated financial institutions to the speed and versatility of Stellar. World Wire aims to replace the legacy correspondent banking system with point-to-point transactions. Right after launch, World Wire will support 47 currencies and 72 countries. World Wire will look to add more countries and currencies in the future.
Jesse Lund, Vice President of IBM states that the vision of World Wire is to make it easier for individuals to deliver cross-border payments to each other and for all players in the process to have transparency into that process.
Our Take
The fact that a global organization like IBM has chosen to build its global payment system on Stellar speaks to the trust that IBM has in Stellar’s protocol and its future viability. This is a strong boost for the visibility of the Stellar platform and a first major use case of an organization building their own solution on top of the Stellar protocol.