Singapore, October 1, 2021 – Today, Partior, a newly-created, blockchain-based clearing and settlement technology platform, announced the appointment of Jason Thompson as its Chief Executive Officer. Based in Singapore, Jason will lead the company to become the technology platform of choice for financial institutions. Partior will innovate and drive efficient cross-border payments and foreign exchange payment vs payment (PvP) settlements using blockchain and smart contract technology.

Partior is a joint venture between investment company Temasek, and banks DBS and J.P. Morgan, with its genesis from Project Ubin, a collaborative project between the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the financial industry to explore the use of blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) for clearing and settlement of payments and securities. Partior is designed to serve the next generation of global payments and currencies, and transform traditional cross-border payments infrastructure. The firm has developed wholesale payments rails based on M1 digitised commercial bank money to enable instantaneous clearing and settlement for cross-border payments.

Jason Thompson joins Partior with over 20 years of leadership experience in the financial services sector. He originally moved to Southeast Asia in 2016 to help lead and build what is today Grab Financial Group (GFG). He then moved to Indonesia in 2018 to build OVO, Indonesia's leading consumer and merchant digital wallet. Both businesses are now unicorns, and well known around the world as they continue to facilitate financial inclusion and serve the ASEAN region. Prior to GFG and OVO, Jason was the Senior Managing Director of Euronet running businesses across Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Jason will be tasked with leading Partior and charting its growth strategy as the firm looks to disrupt the payments industry. He will also be responsible for formulating strategies for the firm's expansion and product offerings, and will work closely with the board of directors.

“I have long been interested in how blockchain and DLT will impact global money movement. As we enter an era where digital currency and assets become mainstream, Partior is uniquely placed to address the issues in this arena and drive adoption at scale,” said Jason Thompson, CEO, Partior.

“At present, cross-border payments infrastructure and flows are complex and often highly inefficient. There are issues around transaction timeliness, fee transparency, and traceability. By leveraging blockchain, smart contract technology, M1 (Commercial bank money) and possibly in the future M0 (Central Bank Digital Currency) programmable money, we aim to speed up transaction time, enable finality and certainty in settlements and make transactions transparent. We are keen on working closely with regulators around the world, such as MAS, to ensure that we establish ourselves as a trusted partner to all financial institutions.”

Partior has also announced the appointment of technology veteran Dmitry Avramenko as its Chief Technology Officer. Dmitry joins Partior after serving almost three years as the CTO of HSBC’s Hong Kong social payment platform, the PayMe e-wallet. During his tenure, PayMe transformed into the dominant wallet for P2P payments in Hong Kong, capturing 75% market share with a user base of over 2.5 million. Prior to that, Dmitry was the Head of Cloud Architecture and Infrastructure at Standard Chartered. He has also held various IT leadership roles within Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Credit Suisse and other major Wall Street financial institutions, as well as founding two start-ups in the IoT and location tracking space. Dmitry will lead the development of Partior’s platform.

“I am thrilled to embark on this journey with Partior. In the age of commercial space travel, VR, metaverse and the fast approaching adoption of CBDCs, someone has to re-imagine the archaic correspondent banking principles. Partior’s offering will do exactly that,” said Dmitry Avramenko, CTO, Partior.

Partior is headquartered in Singapore and is already working to establish offices in London, New York and Beijing as it serves a global customer base. It is a peer-to-peer interbank clearing and settlement network supporting real-time settlement of wholesale banking payments in multiple currencies. To encourage broad participation across the banking industry, Partior will be actively engaging leading banks to join the platform and establish the scale required to benefit the industry. The platform will start with a focus on facilitating flows primarily in both USD and SGD, with the intent to expand service offerings to additional currencies.

“On behalf of the Board, we’re pleased to welcome Jason and Dmitry as part of Partior’s new leadership team”, said Pradyumna Agrawal, Managing Director, Investment, Temasek, and a member of Partior’s Board. “They bring to Partior a wealth of experience in the financial services industry that will be invaluable to realising Partior’s transformative potential as it builds out. We look forward to working closely with the team and to welcoming new partners onto the Partior platform to enhance global money movement and cross- border payments.”

Partior’s board comprises representatives from each of the founding partners that make up the joint venture - DBS, J.P. Morgan and Temasek. They are Lim Soon Chong, Group Head of Global Transaction Services and Group Head of Digital for Institutional Banking, DBS, Umar Farooq, CEO, Onyx by J.P. Morgan and Pradyumna Agrawal, Managing Director, Investment, Temasek.