JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs are the first banks on board the new near-real-time platform for currencies exchange settlement by service provider CLS.
The new service, called CLS Now, is described as “a bilateral, same-day FX gross payment-versus-payment (PvP) settlement service”. It started out on 31 July, with four currencies: USD, GBP, CAD and EUR. More currencies are allegedly to be added.
It went live on 31 July, with JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs as the first participants.
Partly due to T+2
According to CLS, its CLS Now service is meant to mitigate foreign-exchange settlement risk, while also improving liquidity management and giving banks a positive balance sheet effect.
The recent move in the US to T+2 settlement for securities is said to be one of the drivers behind the new service, since the tighter payment deadlines increase the need to get hold of liquidity on shorter notice.