New York Community Bancorp, Inc. (NYSE: NYCB) announced that its subsidiary, New York Community Bank, completed a first-of-its-kind digital payment process through the creation of a blockchain-based digital marker. This will allow Figure Technologies Inc. to conduct real-time secondary trading in digital shares of its stock by utilizing Figure’s alternative trading system (ATS), registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), that operates on Provenance Blockchain.
Based near Oyster Bay in Hicksville, New York, New York Community Bancorp, Inc. provides multi-family loans on non-luxury, rent-regulated apartments in New York City. The company has a significant scale in several lines of business, including residential lending, mortgage servicing, mortgage warehouse, and multi-family lending. It is also the parent company of New York Community Bank (the “Bank”).
Essentially, the Bank serves as a financial intermediary between buyers and sellers of FTI digital shares by facilitating the payment process through the minting of a new digital marker, USDForward ("USDF") — the first to be used by a bank on the Provenance Blockchain. The initial set of transactions by the Bank validates the functionality of the Bank’s digital marker payment platform as an important Provenance Blockchain decentralized finance tool (DeFi tool). In turn, this will support the Bank’s plans to move forward with more digital marker transactions, eventually expanding the entire DeFi ecosystem.
"I am extremely pleased with our inaugural transaction with Figure Technologies,” said company chairman, president and CEO, Thomas R. Cangemi. “The Bank's digital marker program, coupled with Figure's secondary trading platform, is a giant step forward in our recently announced partnership and a very positive beginning for what we expect our collaboration with Figure will produce in the future. The successful completion of our initial use case transactions represents an important milestone for NYCB as we implement our digital strategy.”
The secondary trades using the company’s digital marker represent the first transactions on Figure’s ATS. This enables trade without the need for traditional intermediaries, where settlements occur in real time versus T+2 or longer on traditional exchanges.
Secondary trading on Figure ATS and the use of the Bank’s digital marker involves onboarding all counterparties through the Bank's AML/KYC compliance process, and the Bank programming a USDF digital marker for use by its customers. In its initial use, the USDF digital marker will reference fiat currency to conduct real-time, bilateral settlements of trades and other transactions on the Provenance Blockchain.
"This is the first of a series of groundbreaking transactions we plan on doing with New York Community Bank," said Mike Cagney, CEO of Figure. "New York Community Bank's digital marker and Figure ATS together demonstrate the remarkable possibilities for private company stock trading and settlement in real-time without counterparty or settlement risk, and is a harbinger of the significant disruption blockchain is bringing to global exchanges, including public equity markets."
Moving forward, the Bank plans to participate as a consultant in the development of the USDF Consortium, which is a syndicate of banks in accordance with anti-trust law. The syndicate will operate under a common set of compliance standards to satisfy all regulatory requirements.
