Profile

Location

London

Member since

2009

Reads

Writes about

Payments Regulation & Compliance Retail banking

Jeremy's blog archive

2020 (3) 2019 (2) 2018 (7) 2017 (7) 2016 (8) 2015 (6)

Jeremy Light

VP at A Payments Fintech

Message Posts: 33 Comments: 21

Bio My role is to help drive growth of a new payments network - transaction volume and participants, large and small, with a focus on banks, non-banks, and market infrastructures. However, views and ideas expressed in my blogs and comments are entirely my own and are made only in a personal capacity. I relish independent thinking, and hopefully this is reflected in my writing. I welcome debate and challenges to my writing, please respond and comment with your ideas and views. Career History Payments Fintech from April 2018 Accenture until Feb 2018

Blogs

Fintech

Fintech Resilience - a Lesson from Wirecard

2 h

770 words, 3 minute read The Wirecard debacle has hit the headlines with a vengeance, begging the question: flawed regulation or flawed Fintech models? On first appearance, it feels like that there is a regulatory problem. However, it looks like this is an old fashioned accounting fraud, that just happens to be with a payments processor. The missin...

Blockchain Observations

Programmable Value Explained

04 Feb 2020

(560 words 2 min 30s read) In November 2019 I blogged about how programmable value is the future of financial services. However, it is evident from reactions I have had that the concept and implications of programmable value can be difficult to grasp. A clearer explanation is needed, so here goes. Digital money is widespread in mobile and online ba...

Banking Strategy, Digital and Transformation

The Digital Asset Boom - a trailer

13 Jan 2020

The Original Premiere – The Dot.com Boom Remember the dot.com boom? You need to be over 40 to have direct experience of it from the start, so here’s a recap. It began in the mid-90s with the realisation that the internet was here to stay and a game changer in the way we live and work; leading to a frenzy of start-up companies with new business mode...

Blockchain Observations

Programmable Value is the Future of Financial Services

04 Nov 2019

About 3% of the money supply in the UK is made up of physical notes, the rest is electronic money held on computer systems. Globally, about 8% of the world’s money is cash, 92% is electronic.* With the advent of crypto-currencies – also known as digital assets, virtual currencies, or digital currencies, many, especially older bankers still think cr...

See all Jeremy's blogs

Jeremy is Commenting on

Bitcoin Suisse and Worldline ink partnership for wider crypto use

I concur with Barrie's view, but the metaphor is fundamentally incorrect as well. There is no such thing as a bitcoin or an ethereum etc, there is no digital item you can find or identify, for example a unique character string to represent individual bitcoins or ethereum. Instead, on these blockchains, there are transactions associated (digitally signed) with private keys, and each private key has a net balance, a number, of the buy and sell transactions for that private key, which is typically calculated by a wallet but not stored as a balance (however, there are blockchains such as the XRP ledger which do use the concept of an account and maintain a balance for each private key on a ledger account, which has processing advantages, but there is still no concept of a uniquely identifiable XRP). This balance is just a number, which is given a unit name such as bitcoin, depending on the blockchain. For example, there are 18,038,238 bitcoins as of 9 Nov 2019, which means the sum of the balance on all the private keys used on the bitcoin blockchain sums to 18,038,238. It is incorrect to believe there are 18,038,238 uniquely identifiable bitcoins. Many journalists fail to understand this concept, especially when talking about tokenisation. Digital assets such as bitcoin and ethereum are often described as tokens, but the token is the name of the units of the balances associated with each private key, there are no uniquely identifiable BTC or ETH tokens.

10 Nov 2019 Reply Read article

Swift to test real-time cross border payments in Europe

I am curious how banks can use TIPS for global cross-border payments unless they break their SCT adherence agreements with the EPC. TIPS uses the SCT Inst scheme, and SCT/SCT Inst rules only allow payments which originate from a payment account in the EU. There was a request last year to the EPC to allow payments originating outside the EU to be forwarded as SCTs within the EU, but this was rejected in their change request consultation. Typically, a payment sent to a EU beneficiary from outside the EU is sent to a correspondent bank in the EU which then routes it to its final destination through Target2 or perhaps through a bilateral with the beneficiary bank if ones exists. The Target2 RTGS is expensive compared to TIPS and other clearers of SCT Inst (e.g. EBA's RT1) and is not 24/7 or guaranteed real-time. However, the big issue is that banks typically do not screen intra-EU ("domestic") SCT payments - if the beneficiary bank is unaware a SCT Inst/SCT originated outside the EU, the payment will not be screened as it should be as an international payment creating a financial crime risk. It requires a rule in the SCT Inst/SCT scheme to identify a SCT as originating outside the EU and mandating the originator data that needs to be included at the right detail in the SCT for beneficiary banks to screen. Beneficiary banks would also need to modify their processing to screen SCT Inst/SCTs that originate outside the EU. One for the EPC to reconsider?

23 May 2019 Reply Read article

Access to cash system on verge of collapse warns report

"Sleepwalking towards a cashless society"? - I remember coining that phrase two years ago in a Finextra blog https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/13654/sleepwalking-towards-a-cashless-society?ref=fintastico.com However, portraying the UK cash system as on the verge of collapse is a little over-dramatic. Although declining, the level of cash withdrawals is similar now to that in 2003/4 when usage was rising (peaking in 2012), but there are still 33% more ATMs now than in 2003. In the same way the number of ATMs lagged the demand for cash on the way up (they peaked in 2015), the decline of ATMs will lag demand on the way down. See the stats on the Link website. The availbility and acceptance of physical cash is important, and does need to be managed, but the real issue is the fundamental need to replace cash with a digital equivalent that exhibits similar characteristics to the physical form, as outlined in my blog, such as no requirement to register to use it (or for anything, including a bank account). This requires true innovation, and, two years on, there is scant evidence any is underway, or even comprehension by the industry, including Fintechs, that it is needed.

07 Mar 2019 Reply Read article

Apple Pay growth set to fuel smartphone sales

Time is running out for retailers to provide their own payments service , both in store and in app, and regain control of the customer experience at checkout. They risk becoming dependent on device manufactuers and the “Pays” in a similar way they are on card companies.

14 Aug 2018 Reply Read article