JPMorgan to open new office in Athens, housing payments tech R&D unit

The J.P. Morgan part of JPMorgan Chase ( NYSE: JPM ) is opening a new office in Athens, Greece, that will house a new Payments Innovation Lab providing R&D to the the company's payments business globally. JPMorgan ( JPM ) has been bulking up its investments in technology and payments to fend off challenges from fintech upstarts. In early 2021, JPM CEO Jamie Dimon said the company should be scared by fintechs, saying that the Wall Street bank has put a lot of time into the payments space. The bank intends to hire about 50 employees to the Payments Innovation Lab, including payments products and engineering specialists. JPMorgan ( JPM ) employees already based in Athens, who work across the Corporate & Investment Bank and Asset & Wealth Management businesses, will also transfer to the new office. Part of the lab's work will focus on Onyx by J.P. Morgan, a unit that employs advanced technologies such as blockchain to develop new financial services, products, platforms, and marketplaces. The center will concentrate on supporting the development of solution around distributed ledger technology, artificial intelligence and cryptography related to payments systems. The bank's presence in Greece dates back to 1968 when it opened offices in Paraeus and Athens. Late last month, the company said it started a pilot rent-payment platform for landlords in order to make the process quicker and more efficient. Earlier this year, investors had criticized Dimon for not providing enough detail about JPMorgan's ( JPM ) technology spending plans, the Financial Times reported.