Japanese IT firm Fujitsu has unveiled a new payments technology designed to facilitate transactions between blockchains.

Announced today, the “ConnectionChain” project is aimed at providing a way for two cryptocurrency networks to interoperate. In statements, the company – which is a member of the Hyperledger blockchain consortium and has developed several products based on the technology to date – suggested that rising activity around cryptocurrency exchanges and initial coin offerings (ICOs) is driving demand for such services.

“Settlement between virtual currencies managed using blockchains, however, requires a reliable application to handle the currency exchange processing at the boundaries between the blockchains, and ensuring transparency in this process has been an ongoing issue,” the company said.

To that end, Fujitsu is looking at using a dedicated “cross-chain” that would encompass information from other blockchains, in addition to a transaction control mechanism for organizing when transactions are timed and executed.

Here’s how Fujitsu described the product:

“Fujitsu Laboratories has now developed an extension of smart contract technology which inter-connects multiple blockchains by recording the series of related transactions on each chain in a dedicated blockchain, or a “connection-type chain,” to link to the currency exchange into a single transaction process that can be automatically executed. It has also developed a transaction control technology to synchronize execution timing of the transaction process on each chain.”

In statements, Fujitsu indicated that it could move to commercialize the product as early as next year – though such a move would be contingent on further testing and development, according to the company.

“Fujitsu Laboratories will continue expanding this technology beyond currency exchange to areas such as high-trust data exchanges between companies and contract automation, while also continuing to conduct trials in a variety of fields, with the goal of commercialization in fiscal 2018 and beyond,” the firm said.

Chain crossing image via Shutterstock