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 trade to a transfer of tangible wealth, and tokenisation, in concept at least, provides a route to this goal.
Can payments really work 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 more than a million ISO20022 messages a day - but three quarters of banks are still to make the switch. In the US, Fedwire-connected banks need to be ready by March.
Are we over-focusing on payments?
Have you noticed how, when you go to the supermarket, you pay virtually no attention to what you’re buying, whether it’s fit for purpose, or even if it’s actually in your trolley?
No, nor me. That would be ridiculous…
Third to first - join the party
Most third-party and even fourth-party payments are entirely legitimate, but there’s no denying that they increase the risk of money-laundering. In this article we look at how easily payments can be streamlined from third- to first-party.
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 possible to respect people’s privacy, and the laws that protect it, don’t have to be compromised by openness.
Virtual Virtues
Many of us use third party payments almost every day. We book trains and hotel rooms; we buy online; we buy a friend a gift card… and hardly any of us consider that we’re using a service that’s actively avoided by several major banks. So are they a Bad Thing?
Federate Up
When one of our major network partners described our data storage architecture as a federated ledger, I admit I nodded sagely while wondering:
1: why he was so impressed
2: what he was talking about
Turns out, that’s what we’d invented, and I was the only one who didn’t know it.
Emailed instructions
Hacked emails can present a very bleak Outlook, as one of our clients learned some months ago. It’s far too easy to fake identities and origins - and mail is, even today - sent in plain text form. And, quite apart from the potential financial penalties, the loss of liquidity - sometimes for many months - can seriously damage a bank’s ability to do business.
Dot-to-dot tokenisation
Tokenisation and digitialisation of assets have become daily news items, but they seem to be inextricably linked to currency, typically USDC or USDT. This sounds very like tokenising a token; should we instead be working with the inherent value of the asset itself?
Filling the gaps
Financial messaging isn’t just about SWIFT, Fedwire or the myriad proprietary interfaces deployed by services companies. A cross-border transaction might need to pass through multiple messaging structures on its way. How do we preserve transparency without resorting to time-consuming information requests?