Profile

Location

London

Member since

2009

Reads

Writes about

Payments Regulation & Compliance Retail banking Cryptocurrency

Jeremy's blog archive

2021 (1) 2020 (5) 2019 (2) 2018 (7) 2017 (7) 2016 (8) 2015 (6)

Jeremy Light

Independent Payments Consultant at Independent

Message Posts: 36 Comments: 41

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

Blockchain in Banking and Financial Services

Bitcoin at 50,000 USD

18 Feb 2021

Bitcoin at 50k USD In March 2018 I posted a Finextra blog “Bitcoin at 50,000 USD”. It was framed as a scenario rather than a prediction and I observed that no-one could possibly know with any certainty what would happen next with Bitcoin. However, the objective of the blog was to examine what Bitcoin and the crypto landscape would look like should...

The Payments Business

Big Brother is Watching You - Payment Systems, Surveillance Systems, Control Systems

29 Sep 2020

1230 words, 4:50 min read An Orwellian Dystopia As more and more payments become digital, a key question for payment systems architects is how to preserve the privacy of their users. Without privacy, payments systems risk becoming surveillance systems for government agencies and for corporations. In turn these can be extended into control systems ...

Blockchain in Banking and Financial Services

The Future of Money and Payments

08 Sep 2020

1200 words, 4.5 minute read Central bank balance sheets are ballooning the world over, and in parallel, adoption of shared ledgers using blockchain is accelerating. These major shifts indicate the global architecture for money and payments is on the cusp of structural change. Blockchain analysis and debate are dominated by a focus on cryptocurrenci...

Fintech

Fintech Resilience - a Lesson from Wirecard

06 Jul 2020

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...

See all Jeremy's blogs

Jeremy is Commenting on

ECB and a Digital euro: positive consultation results

A key feature of a digital Euro, or any CBDC is that it needs to be indistiguishable to the public from the digital money they hold as deposits in commercial banks or with EMIs (if you disagree, how would you explain different types of digital money to the public and why they are different?). This is critical for public adoption, and so is ubiquitous use - which means a digital Euro/CBDC wallet needs to work for all standard and new payment use cases - ecommerce, in-store, in-app, P2P, taxes, bill payments, machine (tolls). Given the European Payments Initiative is also gaining momentum, it is imperative that the EPI and digital Euro are compatible with a common payments initiation and acceptance infrasturcture that works for both initiatives and both types of digital money. Commercial banks will still be around with CBDCs, as they have the lending and credit risk management skills and industrial capabilities that will still be needed to lend to consumers, SMEs and corporates and manage their savings. These skills and capabilities will always be needed, and are far outside the core competencies and appetite of central banks. A digital Euro/CBDC could of course eventually replace commercial bank deposits, but that would be a massive migration likely to take decades, so the two types of money will need to co-exist for a long time.

03 May 2021 Reply Read article

TSB calls on tech platforms to tackle scam adverts

Banks should be tackling fraud by identifying and shutting down the fraudsters' bank accounts - better KYC and better account and transaction monitoring, within and across banks. If AI is as powerful as its made out to be, then banks should be able to do this much more effectively with AI. It is difficult to see how publishing bank reimbursement rates has any effect on reducing fraud and fighting crime; but if banks were forced to publish the number of their accounts used by fraudsters each year and the value of fraud processed by them, then that would galvanise them in to action.

22 Apr 2021 Reply Read article

Rishi Sunak announces UK Treasury and BofE fintech taskforce to explore CBDC

Central bank omnibus accounts are a great idea - they open the way for innovative new private sector payments systems to compete with the established interbank systems. However, they seem to be available only to payment operators of payments systems recognised by HM Treasury, so I expect there will be significant hurdles for new entrants. Still, it is a good lead from the Bank of England, and if other central banks follow suit, it opens up the possibility for some great liquidity and business models for cross-border payments.

21 Apr 2021 Reply Read article

Privacy ranked the most important feature for future digital euro

CBDCs seem to be gaining a momentum that makes their widespread rollout around the globe over the next five years almost inevitable. Also inevitable is that many CBDCs will be designed as surveillance and control systems, to keep track on spending, tax and monetary flows at an individual and organisation level, as well as control and incentivise where CBDC can be spent, and who can spend it. Alarming as this is, I expect that CBDCs will be sidelined by DeFi and stablecoins, with innovation that goes far beyond that designed into individual CBDCs. DeFi could even embrace CBDC, for example, programmable stablecoins that simply wrap, or tokenise CBDC as collateral, allowing the CBDC to be used through the medium of the stablecoin, but with features provided by the stablecoin such as privacy.

14 Apr 2021 Reply Read article