EXCLUSIVE— IBM is continuing its momentum in fintech with a focus on international payments and distributed ledger technology by launching a solution for global payments on the blockchain today.

“We are launching a controlled production pilot of a cross-border platform, it provides [money] movement in near real-time, all on the same network,” Jesse Lund, head of blockchain market development, global financial services, IBM, told Bank Innovation.

Announced today at the Sibos conference taking place in Toronto, Canada, the service was developed on top of Hyperledger Fabric (which IBM helped to create as well) with the help of IBM’s partners on the project.

Real money is already moving on the platform, according to Lund, though as yet most banks are involved with the project in an “advisory capacity,” he said. These banks include TD Bank, National Australia Bank, and Mizuho Financial Group, according to the company.

For now, the IBM Blockchain-based payments service will have KlickEx Group, a cross-border payment system headquartered in New Zealand, serving as the “founding financial institution.” Meanwhile, IBM’s other partner, Silicon Valley-based financial services nonprofit Stellar, will facilitate the transactions on the network.

The aim of the project is to bring clearing and settlement to one place during the payments process, a goal which significantly reduces the time and cost of that process itself. IBM is optimistic about its role in the chain, which is to provide “execution and development,” Lund said.

“This is a systemic change we’re a part of, we’re working with the banks to shape what will become a new financial rail,” Lund said.

IBM’s role is to provide the backbone of the network, Lund said, with the eventual goal being IBM at the center of a new fintech ecosystem — which could step on the toes of certain other blockchain-based cross-border payment startups like Ripple (or even companies like Swift itself?) in future years.

Of course, the speed and efficiency of a blockchain’s transaction depends entirely on what’s being traded, which is why some in fintech are focusing not just on blockchain but also on digital currency.

“Until or unless there is a one-world currency wherever you go, until the world has one standard, you’re always going to need to connect the original fiat to the target fiat currency,” Lund said.

So is that a problem that IBM is working on? We’ll see, said Lund, who noted that he couldn’t comment on much “beyond what IBM is doing with the central banks.”

While the world awaits the possible arrival of an IBM digital currency, however, the company is also focusing on the place of other technologies in the blockchain, like artificial intelligence. That is “definitely” an area IBM is looking into, Lund said.

“Even in this project there are nooks for [artificial intelligence,” Lund said. “We have a ‘shadow ledger’ which is useful for analytics of economic payment flows. That would be a data set we [could] feed into Watson to generate new risk models.”