Qatar National Bank Group (QNB), the Middle East’s largest lender by assets, has turned to JPMorgan’s Kinexys blockchain to overhaul its corporate payments system—promising transactions that clear in minutes rather than days.

The move, first reported by Bloomberg, represents a sharp break from the limitations of traditional banking, where cross-border transfers are restricted to weekdays and often dragged down by intermediaries. For treasurers, the upgrade is game-changing.

Kamel Moris, QNB’s executive vice president of transactional banking calls this a treasurer's dream

“We can guarantee payments as fast as two minutes with 24/7 access.”

According to QNB, Kinexys already processes about $3 billion in daily transactions—though that’s still a fraction of JPMorgan’s overall $10 trillion in daily payment volume. The platform operates on a permissioned blockchain, meaning only authorized clients can use it to move funds in real time across JPMorgan accounts.

Permissioned networks differ from public blockchains by adding an access-control layer, offering higher security while still enabling instant settlement. For corporates, this means round-the-clock liquidity and faster settlement times without compromising compliance.

In June, Kinexys successfully tested a cross-chain delivery-versus-payment (DvP) settlement in collaboration with Chainlink and Ondo Finance. The pilot connected Kinexys Digital Payments’ permissioned system with Ondo Chain’s public testnet, which specializes in tokenizing real-world assets (RWAs).

The experiment was seen as a step toward bridging private bank-run payment rails with public blockchain infrastructure—an emerging trend across global finance.

Stablecoins Not Seen as a Threat

Despite Kinexys’s growing role in US-dollar payments, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has played down the competitive threat from stablecoins. Speaking to CNBC on Sept. 23, Dimon said he was “not particularly worried” about stablecoins undermining the bank’s business, though he stressed that banks must stay on top of the sector’s regulatory and technological evolution.

Stablecoins continue to grow at a rapid pace. Data from RWA.xyz shows net inflows surged by more than 320% in Q3, with Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC dominating the market.

For QNB, the adoption of Kinexys is a step toward modernizing the region’s financial infrastructure and ensuring competitiveness in an increasingly digital global economy.

If successful, the initiative could put Qatar at the forefront of blockchain-driven payments in the Middle East, while further embedding JPMorgan’s platform as a global standard for institutional blockchain settlement.