Emma Landriault from JP Morgan: Deposit Tokens Explained, Inside JPM Coin and Institutional Onchain Payments

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Episode description

In this episode of the Applied Blockchain Podcast, Adi Ben-Ari speaks with Emma Landriault, Executive Director, Product - JPM Coin, about what it actually takes to move regulated, institutional money onchain, and why deposit tokens may become the backbone of programmable payments for banks and their clients.

Drawing on Emma’s background as a blockchain and digital asset product lead across major banks, including JP Morgan, the conversation explores the practical realities behind “institutional-grade” tokenized money: 24/7 settlement rails, treasury automation, compliance controls, interoperability, and the difference between technical vs. economic fungibility.

Together, Adi and Emma explore:

• What deposit tokens are, and how they differ from stablecoins
• Why treasury and liquidity management is emerging as the killer use case for programmable money
• How institutional payment rails reduce friction
• What it means to bring regulated bank money to public blockchain environments
• Why interoperability is the next major frontier
• The building blocks required for payment tokens to meet compliance realities

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Resources Mentioned

• The Financial Times
• Research reports (Coinbase, Galaxy, Standard Chartered)
• Bank for International Settlements (BIS) bulletins
• Hard Fork podcast
• Token standards research with MIT Digital Currency Initiative (MIT DCI) on capabilities needed for regulated payment tokens

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Transcript

Narrator (00:00:36):‍

You’re listening to the Applied Blockchain Podcast, hosted by Adi Ben-Ari, Founder and CEO of Applied Blockchain. Join him as he sits down with global experts to uncover how blockchain is driving real-world impact. Today’s guest is Emma Landriault, JPM Coin Product Lead, Kinexys Digital Payments at J.P. Morgan, where she leads the development of token- and instrument-based digital money — drawing on a background in blockchain product leadership across banking and digital assets.‍

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:01:08):

‍Emma, welcome to the Applied Blockchain Podcast. Please introduce yourself — tell us a little bit about your background and what you do.

Emma Landriault (00:01:10):

Thank you for having me, Adi. I’m Emma Landriault. I’m the Product Lead for JPM Coin, which is our recently launched deposit token on Base. I sit in the Kinexys Digital Payments team. Taking a step back — Kinexys is a sub-unit within the Payments business at J.P. Morgan. We’re broadly broken up into three different stripes, and we’ve been active in this space since 2015.

The three stripes are:

• Kinexys Digital Assets — our tokenisation infrastructure. We focus on providing infrastructure for our markets teams and also deploying our own applications, really focused on the tokenisation of real-world assets. Very recently, we launched the Kinexys Fundflow with our private bank, showing the ability to create operational efficiencies and tokenised alternatives.
• The Kinexys Link Network — everything that is blockchain-based information movement. It’s a network of multiple financial institutions who verify payment information or costs with one another — things like Pay-to-Pay, formerly Tech Matching as well — with the goal of reducing fraud and reducing informational discrepancies across institutions.
• And last but not least, where I sit: Kinexys Digital Payments, focused on everything that is blockchain-based money movement.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:02:30):

Okay — and your team, I guess, is the first of these applications to go onto a public chain with a JPM token. Is that right?

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Emma Landriault (00:02:39):

With a fully launched product — yes. We are the first ever bank deposit to go onto a public blockchain ecosystem. It is currently a deposit token in US dollars, issued on Base. So my team focuses on building that product — both on execution and on strategy for where we continue to take it.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:03:00):

Okay, wow — that’s a lot. Let’s start with what your team does. Maybe tell us a little bit about what that really means in terms of digital tokens.

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Emma Landriault (00:03:12):

From the Kinexys Digital Payments side, we launched the first blockchain-based money movement network within the bank back in 2019. This is an account-based solution where we provide deposit accounts — general deposit accounts — on an internal private permissioned blockchain. This allows us to have both the ledger and the payment collapsed into one ecosystem, and we can help our clients move money 24/7 across multiple locations in the world. We have over 12 locations and three different currencies that we offer this in. Over time, it has built a strong payments footprint for the business. We have processed over $3 trillion on this rail — which is one of the higher volumes for permissioned blockchain applications — and we are processing around $5 billion daily on average. This is used by corporates, financial institutions, and other institutional clients who need to move money across our footprint. They may make counterparty payments, or even inter-company payments. But as you can imagine, if you’re a corporate treasurer and you need to move money across Frankfurt, London, Singapore, Australia, New York in a day — many of those jurisdictions have different time zones, limited operational overlap (sometimes only four hours), different holidays, and different cutoff times. All of those things create friction when you’re moving money globally. So we introduced this rail to help manage liquidity in a more real-time fashion. Clients can make near-instant payments on these rails. We also recently launched FX on those rails — so multiple currencies — where clients can not only make payments across these footprints near instantly, but can also convert the various currencies in which they’re transacting. That was the initial footprint. And as a continuation of that, we’ve very recently launched JPM Coin.‍

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:05:21):‍

Just before we get into that — to understand everything you’ve explained so far: it’s really using the tech to add another layer of internal infrastructure to give clients this extra capability. But out of curiosity — for the treasurer, does it feel the same? Is there a difference on the other side? Or is it more the plumbing underneath?‍

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Emma Landriault (00:05:40):‍

It’s such a good question. Part of what we wanted to do was use the technology for the operational benefit it can bring. So today, for existing clients, they have modules that they use for all of our different products. They can use those same modules, integrate via API, or even integrate via the SWIFT network to make payments on this platform. By design, what we’re leveraging is the fact that DLT can help us make real-time payments across our sub-ledgers, as well as build in programmability. We now have treasurers — excitingly — who are all day long using if-then statements to manage liquidity on this rail. We can provide them predictions on how liquidity is being managed. Very recently, we announced that BMW came on to do a cross-chain FX payment, and they coupled that with programmability. They were able to do automated checks and then make the FX payment based on those conditions — near instantly across EUR and USD. And I think that must be something you see with your clients as well — that operational benefit drives the usability.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:06:49):

And I think the treasury management use cases are something that have really come to the forefront now as well. Even for smaller companies, this becomes relevant — without automation on top and so on.Okay — so let’s take the next step, which is the JPM Coin. Please

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Emma Landriault (00:07:06):

‍Of course. I think the natural next step for us was to bring these commercial bank money solutions into the public chain ecosystem.Sometimes I sound like a builder, other times I sound like a banker — but our clients are keen to engage in that ecosystem. The Web3 space is developing, and there are a ton of opportunities for net-new payment flows — faster payments. We’re seeing that with the stablecoin market, and what’s been dubbed “stablecoin summer”, where payments are driving a lot of those use cases. But also, as more institutional-grade real-world assets are starting to be tokenised onto public chain, there’s an ecosystem forming. What we’ve seen is that, from a base liquidity perspective, stablecoins have largely been the answer. But for institutional clients, their risk appetite doesn’t always align with holding significant liquidity — large ticket trades, significant value — in stablecoins. There is a difference in risk management practices around the stablecoin structure, and even the asset backing. On the deposit side, it’s not just asset backing — it’s also multi-layer stress testing, capital management, prudential liquidity ratios, consolidated balance sheet reporting. There are so many layers of risk management practices around deposits. And I think that brings certainty for treasurers looking at what it means to hold significant liquidity on their balance sheet. If you can aggregate that as part of a total position of deposits, it becomes simpler to manage from a treasury perspective. So this can bring balance sheet certainty and assurance — and a new way to hold what is essentially a US dollar demand deposit liability on public blockchain. I realise we’re already jumping into it — so let me take a step back. JPM Coin, with the token ticker JPMD, is a deposit token. It’s essentially an ERC-20 token — with a few custom functions, as you can imagine — representing funds deposited with the depository institution. In this case, J.P. Morgan. Those funds are issued in the form of a payment instrument which sits as smart contracts on Base — an Ethereum Layer 2. It is an allowlisted product, which ensures that once it’s issued to a client, they can transfer it with other allowlisted or permissioned clients. So it is a permissioned token — but it is a deposit, designed to have the same technical capabilities, in terms of real-time transferability and composability, as stablecoins — so it can be transferred natively on-chain all day long, while maintaining the assurance that a deposit can bring.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:10:11):

Okay — and presumably it can be transferred to the other holders, being J.P. Morgan clients.

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Emma Landriault (00:10:15):

Exactly. Currently, we’ve rolled it out as a product that can be transferred among J.P. Morgan clients. But it is structured to support a distribution model for underlying clients as well. This would allow us to grow the boundary of transferability while ensuring there is always KYC assurance of all parties who have entered the ecosystem and are engaging with the token. So really, what we’re doing is moving permissioning from the protocol level — which you’ve seen across many institutions — and bringing it into the token “bubble”, so that it can be deployed on a public chain, but used among authorised participants where we can assure who those parties are.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:10:55):

Okay. So just to make sure I understood: This is issued on a public ledger. The token itself is an extension of ERC-20 — meaning it should be composable with applications that use ERC-20s — but within the constraints of the token itself, including the allowlist and controls.

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Emma Landriault (00:11:20):

Exactly — and you’ve picked up on a really important point. As a Product Lead on this, it’s something I talk about often: it is designed to be interoperable with existing infrastructure — composable with other smart contracts, which could enable swaps or delivery-versus-payment of other ERC-20 tokens. Today, our clients are using this in their existing wallet interfaces — and that’s a key design principle. We see this as an alternative base liquidity layer suitable for institutions. I spoke about why this is strong from a commercial bank money perspective — but it can also bear yield, because it’s a deposit. It can be eligible for relevant deposit insurance schemes. From that view, it’s powerful when you bring it into wallet interfaces where players are already managing on-chain treasuries. Now they can hold a dollar asset — a J.P. Morgan dollar deposit — in the same infrastructure to manage liquidity on-chain, while also being able to off-ramp that liquidity quickly into the account-based structure. We’re often asked how this works with the blockchain deposit account offering — and it’s compelling. If you’re managing liquidity on public chain, and you can quickly off-ramp into an account structure, that unlocks something new. If you’re bringing significant liquidity into public chain space — especially for traditional institutional players — there’s a treasury behind it that needs to manage the balance sheet. That includes end-of-day processes like notional pooling, lending, or repo markets overnight. So in order to integrate large-scale liquidity into the space, it’s important that these assets fit existing structures — which tend to be integrated account-based end-of-day processes, which won’t change overnight to fully on-chain. So we see this as a benefit — particularly for institutional-grade, larger liquidity value.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:13:45):

So processing that in my non-banker brain: If I’m a corporate treasurer, I want the flexibility of having this money available on this platform — but also to be able to bring it back and do all the other things I normally do with it. Like earning yield overnight and so on.

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Emma Landriault (00:14:07):

Exactly. And the other part is — although it’s on public chain now, and will continue to be — this structure can also be used on private chains. So the core benefit is how the asset itself is structured, and the characteristics it can bring. We’ll continue to see benefit both on public chain and private chains, and I think that convergence will continue.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:14:38):

Interesting. I think it’s a huge step — and it should be recognised. What you’ve done is create a token that’s integrated with your services and gives you the controls you need — but you’ve done it in a way that it’s running on rails you don’t control. It’s an open network, and it’s composable with additional applications — which is where this gets really interesting. It’s a token and a form of money that can be used with whatever applications people dream up — within the constraints of the token. That’s huge.

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Emma Landriault (00:15:22):

It comes back to the fundamental part of Web3 — composability — and making the movement of money as seamless and easy as sending an email. Part of the roadmap will be continuing to build out composability and use cases with institutions. This is permissioned, so it can’t be thrown into any pool by design — but we’ll continue expanding what’s possible within institutional trust constraints.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:15:49):

Technically it’s integratable — then it becomes a question of use cases, applications, user bases, and so on. But you’ve done the technical integration with a public chain, and it’s very interesting to see where this goes.

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Emma Landriault (00:16:11):

It’s definitely an exciting one.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:16:15):

And you mentioned potentially integrating with other institutions in the future. Is there a view of what that looks like?

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Emma Landriault (00:16:22):

Yes — really good question. We recently announced a collaboration with DBS in Singapore. They’ve also been active in this space for quite some time. We’re looking at an interoperability framework for deposit tokens and tokenised deposits, and I think this will be part of building out how interoperability can work.

When we think about fungibility in this world, depending on your seat, there are two different ways to think about it:

1. Technical fungibility
2. Economic fungibility

You and I have talked about technical fungibility a lot before — I’m happy to go into the work we’re doing there from a token standard perspective. But on economic fungibility, we need to ensure multiple banks’ deposit tokens can interact. Our view is that this space won’t disrupt correspondent banking entirely. We have the idea of M0 and M1 money — M0 being central bank money, M1 being commercial bank money. We think banks’ clients will be able to hold one another’s deposit tokens — but when you get into off-ramp, clearing and settlement, that fundamental relationship that maintains singleness of money will continue to exist. Correspondent banking isn’t just about moving payments through corridors — it’s also about access to central bank accounts and finality. So we think finality will still exist through that M1/M0 relationship. And looking ahead: we don’t see deposit tokens completely taking over stablecoins. Stablecoins may become privately-issued money — potentially better for retail events — becoming more like M2 money, because stablecoins still need to off-ramp, and where do they off-ramp? Commercial banks. And commercial banks find finality through central bank money. That’s how we see the evolution.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:18:52):

It’s integration — you’re leaning into it. The way I’m thinking about it: card payments aren’t instant settlement, but we treat them that way as consumers. Behind the scenes there’s settlement going on through the network with different timeframes. Maybe it’s similar here: on the ledger you have one level of assurance, and behind it you have other settlement processes and the linkage to central bank money.

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Emma Landriault (00:19:30):

Yes — and that relationship will be defined by the asset type. Technically these assets can look similar, but their behaviour will be defined by what type of asset it is and where it finds finality — or where it finds integration back into traditional money. I don’t love the word “fiat”, because in this case, the deposit token is fiat itself — it’s a single currency. But the point stands: it’s about where it finds finality back into the account-based structure.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:20:03):

Okay — good. And you mentioned technical fungibility and token standards — what are you doing there?

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Emma Landriault (00:20:08):

The second problem is: how do we ensure there are harmonised common ways for banks — and regulated institutions more broadly — to issue these assets? We’ve seen many attempts at building standards. We published research work — a paper — with MIT DCI (Digital Currency Initiative) focused on building payment token standards for regulated institutions. These could include deposit tokens, but more broadly: central banks, commercial banks, BFIs, PSPs — they all have compliance and regulatory requirements.

So we mapped out core foundational requirements to build these tokens in a way that is:

1. compliant with regulatory standards
2. usable and interoperable
3. able to maximise usability — which is why we’re issuing these tokens

We mapped requirements like transferability, gasless transactions, admin controls, and remedial actions — because if there’s a sanctions hit, you may need to seize a token. We mapped these requirements against existing EIPs. Our view was: ISO standards took 20 years to make. They’re broad, expansive — and not everyone is happy with them. While this space is nascent, we should focus on narrow, composable standards — and only innovate where things are missing for institutions. We also published a GitHub implementation.

What we found is:

• ERC-20 works really well for transferability.
• EIP-4337 works really well for gasless transactions.

So we should build payment tokens based on those functions. But we identified two areas that need further work — potentially new EIPs — and we’re committed to working with the industry on these:

1. Admin controls — remedial actions, freeze/seize, etc.
2. Wallet/API-based standards for communication — because compliance will evolve, and we will want to issue attestations on-chain around identity/KYC, transaction limits, and permissions.

On-chain attestations can help — but who is the root of trust? Who issues the attestation? Who allows the client to transact? In regulated payment tokens, that would be the issuer. So we need a clear way for wallet infrastructure providers to integrate with Base to get that verification — and that’s one area we’ll continue to work on with the industry.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:21:51):

I remember in the early days I joined the ISO — but I disengaged from reality as well.

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Emma Landriault (00:21:57):

They are great standards — we use them for payments all the time — but I agree with the broader point.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:23:50):

That latter part is definitely a problem a lot of people have looked at and are still looking at — the whole attestation of identity and KYC. Did you find much out there?

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Emma Landriault (00:24:02):

In the work we did, we focused on building a net-new set of APIs, and MIT led the code development and publication. Once we get on-chain, whether we use something like Ethereum Attestation Service, or build our own attestation capabilities — that remains to be seen. But we intend to keep working with other institutions, as well as technology providers, security architecture firms, and others to build those capabilities out. But I’d ask you as well — you have so many clients engaging in this space — what are you seeing beyond digital identity and verifiable credentials?

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:24:58):

We definitely see the need for this — and lots of attempts — but it hasn’t been brought together yet. There are standards, protocols, attestation services, and also zero-knowledge proofs — but lots of fragmented efforts. It needs to be brought together. And I think the approach you’ve taken is interesting: JPM’s early work was about taking Ethereum and enabling it for private blockchain. But the standards that emerged for stablecoins came from the ground up — from developers and the open ecosystem. So rather than trying to impose standards top-down, you’re playing into that — which is where the innovation happens. That’s super interesting.

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Emma Landriault (00:25:58):

Exactly — that was the approach. We don’t have time to build top-down standards. The space is moving quickly, more issuers are coming in — especially in the last six months — from an institutional perspective. So building bottom-up and maximising interoperability are core principles.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:26:29):

So technically you’ve played into the open innovation — and then I guess you’ll need alignment with other institutions on settlement, KYC, and identity.

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Emma Landriault (00:26:45):

Yes — and even on the technical side, we always say this is a starting point. It will take industry engagement, other issuers coming in, and continued evolution to get to a place the industry is comfortable with. So it’s a starting point.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:27:10):

Can I ask a question? This might be a stupid question. I’m an application developer and I want to develop an application that handles these JPM coins. I could deploy a contract onto Base and as long as it can handle these coins — it could be a contract that does something with them — as long as it doesn’t break any of the functionality of the coin itself.

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Emma Landriault (00:27:34):

So currently, because it is an allowlisted contract, there is permissioning on the contracts that can engage with it. In theory, yes — from a technical perspective, interoperability is built in. But we’re continuing to roll this out in a very strategic and meaningful way.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:27:51):

So the token couldn’t be sent to any account, and it couldn’t interact with any contract.

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Emma Landriault (00:27:55):

Exactly. Transferability is limited by design — because you’re building a trust ecosystem on public chain.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:28:03):

Can I ask you a bit about your background? How did you get into this? What was the path you took?

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Emma Landriault (00:28:10):

It’s such a funny story — thinking back to it, I realise how much I didn’t know at the time. I got into the space around 2017–2018. At that time there was a resurgence of track-and-trace use cases, and crypto was starting to have its first big moment. I was working at a fintech startup, and we were constantly having roundtables and all-hands discussions about this — so I started reading. And honestly, at first, I didn’t understand it. If you don’t come from a decentralised computing background, it takes time to really get it. I came across a book called Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy by Melanie Swan. It was like a textbook at the time — but it was the first time I heard it laid out as: “This is a new network — a transparency-driven network.” Crypto was abstracted away — it was about moving assets and information across a transparent system. That was the moment I understood: this could rewire and re-architect how finance moves — but also how information moves. From then on, I felt super clearly that this was a space I wanted to build in — helping build transparency-driven networks. I spent some time with a crypto startup. Then I went to NTT DATA, consulting in their Blockchain for Banking practice — which was a really exciting time. It was the early enterprise blockchain era: crypto custody, cross-border payments, digital identity — the first networks and proof-of-concepts blooming. Then I went to Scotiabank in Canada, leading product for blockchain payments. And ultimately I joined Kinexys. I was hired initially to build out deposit tokens. And for me, building a token format of commercial bank money — sitting on private and public chains — was critical. Because across institutions you’d see great track-and-trace, bond issuance, securities issuance — but there didn’t seem to be a form of cash. So when I had the opportunity to join J.P. Morgan, who had already been innovating in cash, and build this piece — it felt like such an important thing to do for the industry. And the rest is history.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:31:33):

Yeah — amazing. I was actually working at Lloyds Banking Group, and I went for coffee with a friend who told me he was trading Bitcoin — this was 2014 — and I knew nothing about trading. But I’m a tech guy, and the codebase had become available to play with. It was a network you could just start building with. I came across that and it blew my mind. And I’m still recovering from smart contracts. It was the tech behind it: the automation, the autonomous nature of the contracts, the technical efficiency. That’s why I’ve always been drawn to it. People ask: why isn’t this more widely used? Why haven’t these use cases materialised yet? For me, it’s still very early — because a lot needs to be in place. The primary one is payment tokens. Looking at the technical efficiency, I think about B2B use cases: what can businesses use to pay each other to build applications on top? That’s been a work in progress — but it’s accelerated over the last year or so. And I think what you’ve done is a big move. It seems like a small thing, but it’s not. It’ll be interesting to come back in two years, four years — and see what happened. What was the butterfly effect of that one thing?

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Emma Landriault (00:33:04):

We have an exciting few years ahead as an industry. I think we’ve hit a convergence. You’re seeing more institutions come into public chain space — whether through RWAs, issuance of assets, issuance of stablecoins, deposit tokens. Institutions are starting to take the tech seriously and move away from the “private island” approach — which has been helpful for some use cases. Our blockchain deposit account offering is a great example of where private permissioned chains deliver real benefits. But we’re also seeing recognition that there’s a rich open ecosystem of applications and users on public chains. And at the same time, you’re seeing a bit of a “commoditisation” of crypto: digital asset treasuries, on-chain structured products. So we’re at an interesting converging point — where both sides are taking on some of each other’s characteristics.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:34:21):

Definitely. Emma, I ask all guests at the end — have you got any sources of information you recommend? A book, video, maybe another podcast? It doesn’t have to be about blockchain.

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Emma Landriault (00:34:45):

From the blockchain side, I’m privileged to work with an amazing J.P. Morgan Markets team and the Kinexys Digital Assets research team — who keep us very up to date. Outside of that, I read market research reports — Coinbase, Galaxy — and Standard Chartered have really good reports too. And the BIS — any BIS bulletins are helpful in shaping thinking. For broader industry news, I listen to the FT News Briefing every morning. And I love Hard Fork — the New York Times podcast — every Friday. That’s my favourite. It’s helpful for what’s happening in AI. I think we’ve yet to see a big convergence of crypto and AI — we’re starting to, with agentic AI and some of the experiments Coinbase is doing — but it’s interesting to stay up to date.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:35:53):

I get asked about this a lot — and I think AI could come into the treasury stack as well.

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Emma Landriault (00:35:58):

Right now we’ve seen a lot of agentic AI applications being browser-based, but it will grow. We’ll see proofs of concept and use cases. It becomes a question of how comfortable you are letting a language model make decisions on your treasury — but it’s interesting from a core technology perspective.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:36:21):

You’d have to re-automate. It could be one of the two.

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Emma Landriault (00:36:23):

Exactly. So those are my go-tos for staying up to date — both on blockchain, and across tech and markets.

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Adi Ben-Ari (00:36:29):

Okay — amazing. Emma, thanks.

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Emma Landriault (00:36:31):

Thank you for having me, Adi.

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Narrator (00:36:33):

Thanks for tuning in. Catch every episode wherever you get your podcasts. Follow Applied Blockchain on socials for the latest insights — and explore our Layer 2, Silent Data, at silentdata.com.