Trimont Works With JPMorgan To Put Its Private Credit Business On The Blockchain

Trimont completed its first blockchain-based loan transaction, becoming the first commercial real estate debt servicer to leverage the Kinexys by J.P. Morgan blockchain-based payment platform. The firm says it’s only the beginning.

Within the next four years, Atlanta-based Trimont, which is the largest servicer of commercial real estate debt in the U.S., plans to move its entire private credit platform onto the blockchain.

Putting debt service on the blockchain allows for nearly instantaneous transactions that are settled digitally without human input, which can eliminate delays caused by everything from time zones to bank holidays.

“On the private credit side, we know that that's exactly what our clients want. They want access to cash as quickly as possible,” Trimont Chief Technology Officer Jeff Bolte told Bisnow.

It is a technological leap for the debt servicer that will allow it to process transactions in practically real time. The Kinexys tech programs details like deal terms, payment structures and payouts directly into the platform. A sponsor's monthly payment effectively becomes a trigger that automatically distributes funds to the lender or group of noteholders. 

Trimont is working with one client to pilot the program but is preparing to invite others to opt in to the program. 

“By having direct links into our system as far as where these dollars should go, we've taken the human out of the equation,” Bolte said. “When you do that, you increase accuracy and then security.”

The biggest selling point, however, is speed. With smart contracts instead of account managers dictating where cash goes, payments can be processed nearly instantaneously, regardless of the time of day and without the bottleneck of a human’s approval. 

Trimont, which has been owned since 2015 by global alternative investment firm Värde Partners, is starting with monthly debt service payments. But it is planning to integrate the tech across the entire loan life cycle in the private credit space, Bolte said.

“What we're talking about now is your monthly [principal and interest] payments. They're big, but they're not huge as compared to, say, a payoff quote,” Bolte said. “To us, the payoff quotes are really kind of the Holy Grail. That’s a huge transaction.”

The shift of all payment processing onto the blockchain would likely transform Trimont’s workforce. Transactions today are ultimately still processed by people, with multiple steps between a customer’s payment and its distribution to the lender. It is generally a human who verifies that invoices are correct, payments are received in full and on time, checks clear and payments are sent to the right place.

Putting a contract on the blockchain pushes all of that verification onto the platform. A human has to set the terms and conditions, but once they are input, the contract becomes self-executing. Instead of an account manager approving a payment, a new generation of workers will be the first to develop best practices for putting the checks in place on the payment system’s side.

The digitization push comes after Trimont completed the acquisition of Wells Fargo’s nonagency, third-party commercial mortgage servicing business in March. The merger pushed Trimont’s commercial real estate loan servicing portfolio to more than $700B and more than doubled the number of staff the firm has working in debt service.  

JPMorgan Chase launched its blockchain segment in 2015 and the platform that would become Kinexys in 2017. It has since processed more than $2T in transactions, with a tenfold increase in transaction volume year-over-year and average daily trading volume above $3B, according to the investment bank. 

Kinexys has also been embraced by governments across the Middle East. The First Abu Dhabi Bank spearheaded the launch of the platform’s programmable payments solutions in a September 2024 pilot program. The Commercial Bank of Dubai and Bahrain’s Bank ABC also use Kinexys for some payments, according to J.P. Morgan. 

The Qatar-headquartered QNB began using the platform in March for some dollar-denominated transactions, a month after the Saudi National Bank integrated Kinexys into its treasury. 

In June, J.P. Morgan launched a pilot program for its next layer of blockchain-based products, a proof-of-concept deposit token built on the ethereum network and Coinbase platform. The bank hopes to eventually leverage the cryptotoken, called JPMD, to expand beyond payments and into assets. 

J.P. Morgan is the first bank to try to launch a deposit token, an institutional version of stablecoins, a cryptocurrency that is meant to move in line with a real currency, typically the U.S. dollar. Deposit tokens are backed by actual bank deposits, as opposed to the issuer’s reserves like in the case of stablecoins, and deposit tokens are treated like any other bank deposit on balance sheets. 

A Kinexys spokesperson said the pilot program has drawn significant interest, especially from institutional clients who hold digital representations of real-world assets like the tokenized Treasury bonds offered by BlackRock. 

“These institutions typically participate actively in both crypto and real world asset (RWA) digital transactions, which is why native onchain deposit-based cash solutions fit well with their needs,” the spokesperson said in an email.