Icon's New Payments Framework Bridges Banks and Digital Assets Seamlessly

Icon Solutions has unveiled a new reference implementation for its Icon Payments Framework (IPF). It demonstrates how banks can integrate digital asset payments across any distributed ledger technology (DLT) network. The solution connects with existing core banking and payments infrastructure, addressing growing industry demand for interoperability. The reference implementation supports payments processing with digital assets, including stablecoins, tokenised deposits, and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Banks can use IPF to transform their systems progressively, cutting implementation time by fourfold and reducing total cost of ownership by up to 50%. The framework remains agnostic to the type of digital asset or DLT network, lowering the risk of fragmentation as adoption grows.

Legacy vendor solutions often create complexity, making DLT-based payments slow, expensive, and risky. IPF, already trusted by major banks like Citi, UBS, NatWest, and BNP Paribas, has been used in live environments for DLT-based clearing and settlement. Arjeh van Oijen, Head of Product Management at Icon, stated that banks must move towards a consolidated payments infrastructure to support any payment type, anytime and anywhere. The new implementation highlights IPF’s role in accelerating digital asset adoption. It offers banks a flexible, cost-effective way to introduce new services without relying on external vendors. The solution is designed to meet the increasing need for faster, cheaper, and more efficient payments.