Early in 2021 we formed an enterprise Digital Assets unit to accelerate the development of solutions and capabilities related to digital assets, including cryptocurrencies. In our quest to build the industry’s first multi-asset platform that bridges digital asset custody, execution and administration seamlessly with traditional assets, we are leveraging our digital expertise from across the firm and collaborating with leading tech companies. Distributed ledger technology has the potential to transform areas like custody, collateral management, equity and debt issuance, and we are making progress across a number of potential use cases. In the meantime, we have become a leader in servicing digital asset funds. Currently, BNY Mellon is providing fund services for digital asset-linked products, including those from Grayscale Investments, the world’s largest digital asset manager, and we service most of the cryptocurrency funds in Canada.
As the world’s largest, truly global collateral manager, managing $5 trillion in collateral worldwide, we are leading the industry towards greater collateral mobility and optimization. Two years ago, we announced The Future of Collateral, an initiative to deliver new capabilities, new interoperability opportunities, and significant funding savings for clients. By the end of last year, we had launched a distinct, unified collateral management platform that enables clients to use their U.S.-based assets to support trading objectives in Europe and implemented “active/active” processing to help improve resiliency and recoverability. With these enhancements, clients can capitalize on full substitution capabilities between the U.S. and Europe, harmonized reference data and one unified credit model, helping to improve efficiency in their collateral activities. We also see opportunities for tokenization to mobilize illiquid assets and improve transparency and efficiency, so our Collateral Management business is partnering closely with our Digital Assets unit to explore leveraging blockchain technology to increase collateral availability.
We continue to play a leading role in driving the proliferation of real-time payments in the U.S. You may remember that in 2017 we were the first bank to originate a payment on The Clearing House’s Real-Time Payments Network. Late last year we were the first to launch a real-time, electronic bill-pay solution for billers and their customers. We are live with Verizon, our first client, and the long list of prospects for this particular capability is growing. Due to our unconflicted role as the bank of banks, we are also uniquely positioned to white-label real-time payments and ancillary services to regional banks across the country. We are pleased with the initial uptake and see a compelling revenue opportunity over the next few years, not only with other large billers and regional banks, but also brokerage firms and insurance companies.
BNY Mellon’s Pershing is a leading wealth technology and platform provider and a valuable distribution engine, helping our clients distribute over $1 trillion of assets. Last fall, we embarked on one of our most ambitious, multiyear initiatives yet and launched Pershing X SM , a new business unit that will design and build innovative solutions to transform the growing advisory marketplace. Pershing X is our answer to the challenges clients have in managing multiple and disconnected technology tools and data sets for their advisors. Our comprehensive set of advisory capabilities — from models to trading to performance reporting — will be fully integrated with Pershing’s clearing and custody services to create exceptional experiences for clients. Over time, we believe that the Pershing X offering will be a meaningful source of incremental growth for the firm.