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Data on blockchain networks needs to be looked at, since the blockchain network can be accessed by various actors - this means sensitive information cannot be stored there - especially anything that could be used to identify a person/account. 

The future of digital banking experience needs to have the customer at the centre and in-control of everything they are doing - not a decentralized web of access....

Great read. A few points that I think maybe a little missleading in their however....

A regulated institution can not reliquish accountability and must have control in place at all times. Moving to the Cloud does not mean you are reliquishing control or accountability at all, in many ways you are able to gain greater levels of control and your internal governance and processes should ensure / prove that. As for accountability, this can never be shifted.

The PRA position on outsourcing has remained pretty consistent, and though Cloud is being adopted by all banks in some form, the issues of dependencies, third parties, PPT, control and accountability havent changed much, nor do they need to. 

I would also state that, the chances of one of the big providers having to withdraw a service / "shut down" as you put it is simply never going to happen. There is no scenarieo or risk of this whatsoever. Likewise external threats are larger when NOT using the cloud, as to are internal threats and areas of resiliency. 

There are many challenges for Cloud providers to meet the needs of the financial services sector, and to be frank, my experience is that only a few can actually meet all the requirements. Microsoft Azure have a number of FCA amendments and are even launching what they call their "financial cloud" services within Azure. Others like AWS have caught up and can provide the comfort levels and control that regulated businesses must have. But, and it is a big BUT, most havent. As a CTO/CIO in a bank you must challenge things like, right to inspect, data residency, data in flight paths, granular levels of security, access, authentication, true resiliency, collaboration regarding fighting cybercrime, private connectivity and many other aspects. As I say, when you get into the real detail there are few providers who meet all of your needs and therefore your regulatory obligations.

The use cases here are very very different. I would have been very shocked if Curve wasnt the first to get back up and running. Its far harder to do so if you are actually holding deposits and utilising various other payment methods...

Dont get me wrong, its a great news story and shows the flexibility and power of API first / modular approach to technology and integrations. The story should also point out that, if you are a fintech, and you're going to be dependent on other financial service providers (and let's face it that is almost every single fintech) then you must seek out those providers that you know operate in the right way. That does send you back to those institutions who are more heavily regulated - like the banks themselves. With heavily regulated providers you can draw a greater degree of comfort (and reduced risk) that cases like this with WireCard won't happen...... Its one of the many reasons we started ClearBank in the Uk.

CBDCs are gaining momentum, but they have so many fundamental issues that remain un-answered. Recent use cases have even illustrated that there is no requirement for CBDCs to achieve the experiences we want across financial services. 

One of the un-answered aspects is that of privacy and it requires us to understand what could be used to identify us going forward. CBDCs could be very much against the principles of legislation such as GDPR. So yes, privacy is key and unfortunately until CBDCs answer that (the same applies to DeFi and stablecoins) we shouldnt expect to see mass rollout or adoption anytime soon....

I think this was innevitable, even back in 2012 when the service was getting launched. I actually remember writting an article on the shelf-life of pingit back then....Unfortunately the experience, unless you had a barclays bank account, felt like loading a wallet and the benefit of making a payment via mobile phone number was marginal even back then. However, the product has survived and should have moved on...

What we are seeing here is that the industry has caught up in its thinking, so with Open Banking the Pingit solution looks very narrow - so its days were very much numbered. 

If anything Pingit should serve as en example to all banks that they must embrace new market infrastructure and embrace partnerships with FinTechs. 

Open Banking has opened the door, not by a lot, but enough for us to ask what more could be done. What better experiences and improved customer outcomes should we be driving towards. Open Finance (if implemented in the correct way, and by that I mean NOT using direct APIs) could be revolutionary for the industry and massively beneficial for us as customers. The smart banks will work out their "value" within Open Finance and I am sure, that will mean staying away from building bank centric open finance type applications....

If we want to make it harder we need to move to a verified identity paying another verified identity, not rely on "name of account holder" and a good old meaningless sort code and acc. Only then will we be able to cryptographically ensure people are paying who they actually believe they are paying.

Not entirely sure what is being proven here? Funds in a citi account, which are tokenised, then transferref using the blockchain, then i guess tokens sold for Dominican pesos....Which meant the real liquidity was then moved to whoever now owns the tokens, so sent from the citi account, to no doubt a correspondent etc etc ... 

It seems that these blockchain based transfers solve only a small fraction of the problems that face cross border transactions - but they introduce friction on other departments within the bank. 

This illustrates another reason why I am so excited about the benefits participant banks have with RTGS.global

@Rajan, we are working on just that ;)

I should have added, the issue of identitiy needs to be a cautionary one. We cannot afford to get "identity" infrastructure wrong, there is too much at stake.

Digital identity, cautionary facts – FinTechAndrew – The blog (wordpress.com)

This is the shape of working to come. I would not want to be a landlord in London right now, nor an owner of establishments that depend on lunch time worker footfall...