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The wholesale CBDC opportunity is a massive win for Regulators and Banks alike. They substantially reduce or remove credit risk, the cause of the last Global Financial crisis. In addition, they potentially change RWA assets to HQLA assets, reducing bank capital costs. In my view, the immediate opportunity is to fix the wholesale markets, and that goes a long way to reducing the $15Trn of financial friction costs that we (at RTGS.global) have been exposing for the past 2 years.

Mastercard has moved Jersey, in the Channel Island into Europe for international interchange fees. Visa thankfully still regards Jersey as part of the UK. Geographically the island hasn't moved, and I'm not sure with the current fishing dispute that the Freanch wish to adopt us. This however highlights the fact that interchange has already become a sales tax, and not a value added service as originally intended.

Retail CBDC's will not operate correctly until the global wholesale market inefficiencies are resolved. This involves moving to a 24x7x365 digital environment at a wholesale level and then incorporating wholesale CBDC's to eradicate interbank credit risk. Remember, this risk was a key issue in the 2008 Global Financial crisis. 

Benoît is correct in his view and sense of urgency. The work that we are doing underpins the BIS vision where central banks and regulators retain their key role in market supervision and financial stability within an efficient digital environment. This new environment allows commercial banks to benefit from risk reduction and potential improved use of CET1 capital. It also enables customer service levels to be delivered, removing the most frequently asked question in banking, where is the money?

Is a latte-seed equity round closed out in a cofee shop and a further demonstration of hybrid working paractices developing in Canada??

The impact of CBDC's in the wholesale interbank money market is instanteously significant. Had this option existed in 2006, the impacts of the Global Financial Crisis could well have been diminished. 

Agreed, and Christian Schäfer, the single infrastructure network you envisage is already built, where B2B payments run hand in hand with remitances, card acquiring operates with instant merchant settlement. 

This made me smile.

In 1995 when we built Barclaysquare, a JV between us and Barclays I introduced the concept of digital receipts which then became a standard service component for all merchants in the subsequent roll-out of WorldPay. BarclaySquare launched on 1st June 1995 and the front page of the Financial Times headline said "New virtual shops free from fraud". This was true then due to the very low number of internet shoppers. We eventually morphed those receipts in 2001 into the WorldPay Internet Payments guarantee, to protect consumers against fraud and merchants against chargebacks that had developed during those 5 years. 

I am pleased that Miles is helping us tackle financial friction - if you want to see the exact incurred this year, the real-time counter is available on the RTGS.global website. 

ISO 20022 is the start. When you then overlay Atomic settlement it transforms the way every payment transaction is undertaken, from cross-border, domestic payments, and the card schemes. We have tested POS and e-commerce on the RTGS.global network and payments from the customer account to the merchant bank account take less than a minute. This removes financial friction costs, dramatically improves business cashflow ,and uses the FIAT currencies that consumers and businesses already use and understand.

And of course this happened when 3D secure was originally introduced. We need a better solution, and industry collaboration on adoption, before its introduced?