The NHS can't hear me

I genuinely and profoundly admire the NHS. It’s under-funded and frequently under-appreciated. But it’s caught in that terrible trap of not having the time to improve. It’s attractive to...

ISO20022: the right direction?

In January, I commented on this website on the progress of ISO20022. Since then, little has changed, despite several initiatives that, one would have hoped, should have accelerated take-up...

More than an embarrassment

Today the news is flooded with reports of a data leak committed by a UK defence official in 2022. We hear about this now because the superinjunction hiding the error finally expired yesterday...

What's in a token?

The OECD article on The Future of Tokenization is a useful summation of the current progress to a tokenised model for world commerce. I’ve long been an advocate of a system that restores...

Payments in ISOlation

The deadline for financial institutions’ adoption of ISO20022 is now only months away. It’s no longer an issue to deal with “next year”. Progress has unquestionably been made - SWIFT processes...

over-focussed on payments?

Have you noticed how, when you go to the supermarket, you’re completely absorbed in the payment process and give virtually no attention to what you’re buying, whether it’s fit for purpose,...

Third to first

While there’s nothing essentially wrong with third-party payments, their unpopularity with many banks can cause considerable delays to international payments. Sometimes they can be blocked...

A question of privacy

I accept that my obsession with transparency - and the diatribes which it creates - can easily be described as banging on. Well today, I’m banging on about why I’m convinced that it’s...

Virtual Virtues

Many of us use third party payments almost every day. We book trains and hotel rooms; we buy something online; we buy a friend a gift card… and hardly any of us consider that we’re using...

Federate up

I’ve been reading a lot recently about how the federated ledger model should provide the next generation of distributed ledger technology. It’s been an interesting read because, to be completely...

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