The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) defines interoperability as follows:

“The technical or legal compatibility that enables a system or mechanism to be used in conjunction with other systems or mechanisms.”

When the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) community talks about interoperability, they mean that two or more systems can work seamlessly with each other. What they are talking about is enabling cross-chain atomic swaps – swaps in which either both legs happen or neither of them do. Deriving from the Greek ‘atomos’, the word roughly translates to ‘indivisible’. It is indivisibility which ensures both legs of DLT-enabled financial transactions can be actioned,...

• Latest funding round follows Series A of £55m in June 2019
• Lead investors include Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas

The world of finance has been rapidly evolving with the rise of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. One individual who has played a crucial role in bridging the gap between traditional banking and the digital asset space is John Whelan, the Managing Director of Crypto and Digital Assets at Santander. In this blog post, we will explore John's interesting personal journey to his current position, Santander's involvement with our first-of-its-kind payment system and the many reasons why John is enthusiastic about the future of finance. 

Fnality is taking serious action to address unconscious bias and a major focus for this quarter has been to support the 2023 International Women's Day’s theme #EmbraceEquity.

Fnality and HQLA^X demonstrate together with Banco Santander, Goldman Sachs and UBS, the first cross-chain repo swap pilot across Corda and Enterprise Ethereum, paving the way for the settlement of intraday transactions

In the previous parts of this series, we’ve been looking at the regulation needed in order to encourage the adoption of stablecoins for retail payments (read Part 1 and Part 2 here). 

Notwithstanding the similarities between bank deposits and stablecoins, there are some notable differences. For instance, a stablecoin issuer can allow the stablecoin to be listed on (crypto) exchanges and trading venues. In contrast to stablecoins, bank deposits are not tradable, i.e. there is no secondary market for bank deposits. In practice, issuers of the stablecoins are also operating the exchanges where their stablecoins are traded alongside other cryptoassets. But stablecoins can also be listed on...

Since the first discussions over a global stablecoin started in 2019, international standard-setting bodies have been developing and refining recommendations for the regulation, supervision and oversight of global stablecoin arrangements (FSB 2020 and FSB 2022). In the first blog of this series, we looked at the issuance and redemption of stablecoins, but now we want to focus on the risks and benefits from the opportunity to make payments with stablecoins, and how this should be regulated.

In 2019, when a Facebook-led consortium announced its plans to launch the global stablecoin ‘Libra’, many – including politicians and high-level representatives of the G7 - thought that a new international financial system, arguably outside of the realm of regulators was about to emerge. This conclusion was mainly rooted in a mindset that the blockchain technology underpinning stablecoins would compromise the reach and effectiveness of regulators. In hindsight, such fears have turned out to be unfounded. Even though the Libra project has been wound down, the international standard-setting bodies under the auspices of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) have been developing and refining...

Fnality and Finteum have executed the first cross-chain FX settlement transaction test across the two platforms, reducing cross-currency settlement to T+0