Unleashing the power of stablecoins or digital currencies: a paradigm shift in the world of payments

Written by Richard Anderson, a portfolio Non-Executive Director and risk management consultant, who

My LinkedIn feed is inundated with articles about asset tokenisation. Maybe that is my fault because I’m a sucker for a good tokenisation story - ever since I first came across Fnality, the first Financial Market Infrastructure for digital assets which is now operating under HMT rules, and FMID and PSR regulation.

But this is still remote to the lives of most people. Few really know what digital currencies such as stablecoins, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) and Tokenized Deposits are, or what the difference is between them and fiat money. And quite frankly, why should they? After all, how many times have you received an invoice asking you to pay by Bacs, when really, they mean Faster Payments (FPS)? The question now is whether stablecoins, tokens and the like are set to revolutionise payments and the “user experience” of money. UK Finance wrote a report in 2023 showing the changing evolution of payments over that last ten years, and forecasting the next ten years to 2033. Chart…