CLS Payment Netting Service Now Live With Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley

CLS has announced that CLSNet, a standardised, automated bilateral payment netting service for over 120 currencies operating on a distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform, is now live with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Six additional participants from North America, Europe and Asia, including Bank of China (Hong Kong), have committed to joining the service, with a steady onboarding of several other market participants planned in the next few months.

The service has been developed for, and in collaboration with, buy-side and sell-side institutions. CLSNet has been designed to standardise and increase the levels of payment netting in the FX market for trades not settling in CLSSettlement. By standardising and automating the calculation of payment netting, CLSNet can reduce costs for market participants and increase liquidity in foreign exchange (FX) markets. The service also supports compliance with certain principles of the FX Global Code of Conduct. CLSNet was built in conjunction with IBM and runs on the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Fabric blockchain framework.