Wells Fargo wants to launch cryptocurrency Wellcoin–facilitate its global cross-border payment business

Wells Fargo, an American financial giant, is developing a dollar-linked cryptocurrency called “Wells Fargo Digital Cash.” Wellcoin will run on Wells Fargo’s first blockchain platform and will initially be piloted for internal settlement of the company’s business. Wellcoin will be able to address cross-border payments within its global network, Wells Fargo said in a press release.

Wellcoin will start trial operation in 2020. The trial operation will start with us dollar transfer and gradually expand to other currencies. Ultimately, it aims to cover all branches of Wells Fargo bank worldwide.

Wells Fargo is understood to have started laying out the blockchain industry as early as 2016. But unlike some companies, Wells Fargo has been holding back on the application of blockchain technology.

Lisa Frazier, head of innovation at Wells Fargo, said recently that as services go digital, “today’s technology puts us in a strong position to further reduce friction at traditional boundaries, which is increasingly needed.” Wells Fargo said in a statement that its proprietary Digital Ledger Technology (DLT) platform would allow it to transfer funds “near real-time” and “not adversely affect underlying accounts, transactions or reconciliation infrastructure.”

The blockchain technology allows Wells Fargo’s international offices to transfer funds outside normal business hours to eliminate dependence on third-party payment intermediaries, thereby reducing the time and cost of such transactions.



In October 2016, Wells Fargo, anz and SWIFT jointly developed a prototype of blockchain bank. The prototype allows the two Banks to coordinate payments with each other via Swift, providing real-time transaction records through the use of distributed ledgers. They said the platform could “improve the efficiency and speed of reconciliation and settlement of cross-border correspondent bank payments”.

At the end of July 2018, Wells Fargo filed another patent application for tokenized management based on blockchain technology. It is understood that the technology can mark a variety of information, including documents, photos, audio, video and other digital media.



Wells Fargo says the technology could be used to manage and protect sensitive information and data.

The traditional cross-border payment method has many defects such as high cost, long time and low efficiency, while blockchain technology can well solve these problems. In fact, in addition to Wells Fargo, there are many traditional giants in the field of blockchain + cross-border payment.

The digital currency developed by Wells Fargo has many advantages for the industry. On the one hand, it has injected new impetus and attracted more attention. Moreover, through the guidance of traditional financial giants, more user groups can understand and participate in the field of blockchain.