Stablecoins: Bank Strategy – Just Another Rail

Bankers View: Stablecoins, Deposits, and the Future of Payments

Summarizing my 20 odd tweets yesterday. Note that I don’t necessarily agree with the banks’ strategy, but I do understand it. Given that most of the press is focused on how Stablecoins will destroy banking, I thought a banker’s view would be a useful counterbalance.

The buzz around stablecoins continues, often painting a picture of banks demise. As a former banker I thought I’d share my view on the topic and explain the bank strategy (as I see it). While stablecoins present novel tech, the notion that they will supplant established retail banking relationships is a bunch of “hooky”. Big banks aren’t just watching from the sidelines; they are best positioned to integrate this new rail, much like they’ve absorbed countless payment innovations before.

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Retailer Actions in Agentic Commerce

Navigating a New Demand Paradigm and Its Two-Sided Imperative

The rise of agentic commerce, where AI agents could potentially execute purchases for consumers, signals more than an evolutionary step in e-commerce; it represents the emergence of a new type of demand: a direct customer buy order, theoretically complete with payment authorization. This presents a two-sided imperative for retailers. Firstly, ensuring your products are discoverable and favorably considered by these AI agents an “SEO for the agentic era.” Secondly, developing the organizational capacity to act on this demand, potentially bypassing traditional e-commerce pathways for direct fulfillment via APIs, with updates to fraud and risk screening.

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TCH RfP is Live (for Consumers)

Big congrats to TCH, and the 3 banks live with RfP. This is a major accomplishment. As I’ve written RfP is the most important transaction set for RTP. 

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To get a view of what this looks like see this consumer support page from

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Adios 3DS “Step up”.. Hello FIDO2

Short Blog

There are significant changes brewing in eCommerce authentication and authorization. Today’s blog is more of a headline summary of key points that I hope to break down over Thanksgiving. 

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Innovation in Networks – Part 4

The Strategic Innovation Era

© Starpoint LLP, 2022. No part of this site, blog.starpointllp.com, may be reproduced in whole or in part in any manner without the permission of the copyright owner.

This blog has been sitting at 80% for almost 3 months. Sorry for the delay. This was a 30 page blog that I slimmed down to 16. Thus the long summary section. This blog is focused on networks and their ability to: 1) internally charter their own evolution, 2) grow network of supporting stakeholders, 3) stimulate network growth, and 4) encourage investment/innovation. Why read this? Payment innovation is set to grow Global GDV by 50% (above baseline) over the next 5-7 yrs. Today’s blog is a basis for this hypothesis.

A very long blog with 3 page summary below

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Google/FedNow + Banks Hire New Network CEO

© Starpoint LLP, 2022. No part of this site, blog.starpointllp.com, may be reproduced in whole or in part in any manner without the permission of the copyright owner.

September 7

This blog is dated so I removed most of the content. Key Updates – 21 Jan 2023

  1. Banks gave up on their own AUthentify Wallet launch and jumped on board a “white label” SRC wallet led by Visa (See 23Jan2023 WSJ)
  2. Banks have been working on mobile payments for 13 years through TCH (see blog).
  3. Inital pitch was at Money 2020, big retailers didn’t bite (see blog)
  4. The wallet is not owned by EWS, but a new payment network led by James Anderson. The ownership of this new network is the same at EWS (see blog below).
  5. Competitor is Apple.. the banks want to own the mobile payment experience. Google is working with the TCH banks and is also working with FedNow (long blog coming on this one)
  6. TCH RTP effort focus has move to commercial flows and bill payment.. Forbes Article on Launch of Pay by Bank using TCH. Google’s role seems to be limited to hosting servers in the Google Cloud. This was NOT the big announcement I thought was coming. It looks like the TCH tokens in Google Wallet are actually “network tokens” with token vault as TCH
  7. Apple is not involved in any of these activities, yet Google is working to pilot both FedNow and TCH RTP to leverage their India UPI success.
  8. The banks have just hired James Anderson as CEO of a new banking consortium where the assets of TCH, Akoya and Early Warning line up. This CEO will be tasked with creating a new network to “compete with ApplePay” as the premier mobile payment platform.

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Secure Remote Commerce – May 2022

Short Blog. I wanted to follow up on the last point I made in Bank ID Service – What Is It?

Some US Banks are refusing to jump on board SRC. As managers of risk, Banks are reluctant to accept network services which level the playing field in both managing risk and “diluting” their brand.… In some respects Authentify is a response to SRC.

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Role of Identity and Trust in eCom

Please excuse typos.. Editing not complete. I had a great compliment this week: “Tom you write so dense.. why are you so different”? I’m not an analyst or a blogger, but a guy that has run operational businesses and led venture investments. The only great thing I’ve ever done in life is to meet great people with passion and ability to execute on a vision. This blog is how I chat with all my colleagues. Glad others find it useful..

This is a rather long blog.. if you don’t have time read the wrap up at the end which is a summary of key points.

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Continuing on from yesterday’s blog on Authentify – Bank ID Service, I thought I would outline the role of identity in eCommerce and the problems to be solved. Although most of you know me as a payments guy, I also have deep roots in data working directly with retailers, AdTech, Google/FB and media (in addition to issuers/acquirers/networks). In looking through eCommerce articles I couldn’t find one relating to identity (from a big picture perspective).. So I thought I would write one.

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