Settlement cycles have shortened from the 14 days that it took when horses and ships were part of the process to the current norm for many financial transactions of 3 days abbreviated as T+3. The push continues to drive that further down to T+2 and T+1. Straight-Trough-Processing (STP), aims at… Read more »
It’s unfortunate that to describe people with limited or no access to financial services we use terms like unbanked or underbank, suggesting some sort of unmet need. While hearing about the undernourished should draw our sympathy, for the unbanked, apathy would be an acceptable response. Financial inclusion, is a desirable… Read more »
In 1974 Herstatt, a German bank, failed to meet a settlement transaction with a counterparty resulting in loses to the counterparty. Herstatt was duly punished with the suspension of its banking license. As a consolation, cross-currency settlement risk came to be known as Herstatt risk In a previous post link,… Read more »
Is undeniable the success of mobile money M-Pesa in Kenya, with reports of over 30% GDP flowing through this system and user base of over half the population. Less clear is why this success has not been replicated in other countries even with smilarities with Kenya. Maybe we just need… Read more »
On the previous post various challenges faced by a Bitcoin based remittance systems were evaluated. Namely volatility neutralization costs and transaction delays as side-effects of Bitcoin underlying consensus process. In this post we will take a look at Ripple, one of the permissioned ledger systems, as a possible workaround. For an explanation… Read more »
Lessons from the trenches After spending over a year building a Bitcoin based remittance service into Indonesia, it became evident that Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies systems are unlikely to deliver on the promise of cheap remittances. This is likely to be the case for other remittance target countries facing the same… Read more »