Tag Archives: trust

Visa Stablecoin Platform

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Exec Summary

  • Consumers never wanted stablecoins, they wanted 5% yield or a crypto off ramp, BIS data confirms retail use is under 1% of volume
  • Stablecoins are a settlement innovation, networks did not hijack them, incumbents always adopt new tech to compete
  • Visa’s value is governance, operations, and distribution, VSP is just the next network in the network of networks
  • VSP = single Visa managed environment to mint, burn, move, and manage OUSD, with wallet as a service, passkeys, maker/checker controls
  • OUSD first because compliance and trust win, banks trust banks, not Circle, 63% of corporates want stablecoin access via their bank (EY Parthenon)
  • Use cases anchor on ramps and off ramps, treasury funding, global payouts, merchant settlement, stablecoin linked cards ($7B settlement run rate, 160+ programs)
  • VSP is to stablecoin what Visa DPS is to debit, same playbook, different rails and connection points
  • Visa enables Bank Issuers without picking winners, Mastercard bought BVNK and owns a single roadmap, overlap is real but philosophies differ
  • Enablement models win, every member becomes an investor in the network’s growth
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Understanding eIDAS Impact on Banking and Payments

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What is eIDAS?

eIDAS stands for Electronic Identification, Authentication and Trust Services. It is European Union law — originally enacted in 2014 (eIDAS 1.0) and substantially revised in 2024 (eIDAS 2.0, formally Regulation 2024/1183) — that creates a legal framework for digital identity across all 27 EU member states.

The core ambition is straightforward: a citizen in Portugal should be able to use their national digital identity credential to authenticate with a German bank, a French hospital, or a Dutch government portal — and that credential should carry legal standing equivalent to a physical ID card.

eIDAS 2.0 goes further. It mandates that every EU member state must offer at least one European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet — a mobile application in which citizens store and selectively disclose certified attributes: their national eID, driving license, professional qualifications, and eventually bank account credentials or KYC attestations.

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ZelleUSD — A Private Coin

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Builds on: Stablecoins: A New Model of Trust | JPMorgan, Citi and TCH: Tokenized Deposits ON Chain | Open Banking, Open Payments and Trust Networks

Early Warning announced this week that Zelle is going international, starting with India — the world’s largest remittance destination. Alongside this, they unveiled ZelleUSD (ZLUSD), which they’re calling a “proprietary U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin.” Cue the analyst notes about banks “finally getting into stablecoin.”

I’m already laughing… this is Banks BEATING Stableocin and Remittance Providers at their own game with a closed network. This Is Not a competitor to USDC, and you can’t buy it on Coinbase, so Don’t Get Confused.

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Carts and Mandates: Decoupling Discovery, Authentication, and Liability 

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Executive Summary

I just got back from 2 weeks of vacation and catching up on all that transpired. No one reads this blog for its technical depth, but a few browse it for the economic implications and power struggles going on behind the scenes (hence “inside baseball”).

I/O 2026 was last week (see product announcements). The Commerce team showed how Universal Cart, Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) would drive a frictionless revolution in digital commerce.  By consolidating products from Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail into a single persistent cart, Google is attempting to establish itself as the default transaction and orchestration layer of the internet. While consumers would love to engage across any platform and any retailer from any device…. A universal cart is also necessary for operating across any agentic platform and “specialist”.  Agentic commerce is certainly gaining traction, but Walmart’s Rufas and Amazon’s Alexa also want to play in the game at the front end (so does Open AI)

Wallet expansion to universal cart is great for Google; however, it’s not great for everyone else, as platforms make for poor custodians (i.e., they are not neutral). Particularly when it comes to controlling credentials and measuring their own effectiveness.  My concerns here are shared by retailers, banks, processors and networks as this architecture conceals a profound structural conflict over control and economic value.  Google’s “own-it-all” will create a great customer experience, and allow them to move agentic from the current “conversational commerce to merchant checkout” state, but who wants to invest in a platform where they become disintermediated, or a dumb fulfillment pipe? 

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Owning Your Bot’s Actions: Target Part 2

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In my previous post, covering Target’s “Your Bot is Your Responsibility”  was the only move they could make. When you let an AI bot loose with your credit card, you are effectively handing your car keys to a teenager; you can’t act surprised when there’s a dent in the bumper. But Target’s stance isn’t just a legal shield; it is a flare gun fired over a massive Governance Gap. Today’s agentic commerce is high on technology and standards, but dangerously low on the commercial terms that actually make markets function. To be clear, it’s not for lack of effort from V/MA, nor is it technology; it is resistance to change.

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BankID Norway – Evolution and Success

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If you follow my 80+ blogs on identity, you should like this success story today.  The Norwegian digital identity scheme, BankID, serves as the #2 best financial identity case study (behind India’s UIDAI) with a penetration rate of 97% across 4.7 million citizens. What could US banks learn? What are their challenges in replicating this model? 

Today I’m giving the background on what BankID is.. In part 2 I’m going to interview my good friend Eric Woodward, former president of Early Warning and the creator of Zelle_ID (see youtube), at least until it was killed as the new CEO asked “what on earth does identity have to do with payments”. OMG

The FIDO Alliance is hosting a Webinar on Bank ID Norway tomorrow at 7am pacific.

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Updates from Money 2020

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It was truly fantastic catching up with so many of you in person at Money 2020! It’s clear that payments, AI, and digital assets are accelerating at an unbelievable pace. If you didn’t manage to make it, or if you were too busy grabbing coffee to focus on the news flow, here are my top takeaways from the floor. I hope to see some of you in Miami at Simon’s Fintech Nerdcon!

The core theme I kept hearing is that the future of commerce is moving rapidly toward machine-to-machine (M2M) interactions. As this happens, the role of V/MA networks (governance, economics, trust, identity, and authorization) becomes even more crucial. The technology is the easy part; the governance is the real competitive moat.

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Agentic’s Real Economic Opportunity: Edge Use Cases

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This blog is a monster 25 pages. Hence the executive summary

Transformation seldom starts at the core of an existing market or business, but rather starts in edge use cases of unmet needs and price performance (ie, Innovators Dilemma). Edge UCs may be the biggest economic opportunity for Agentic, organizing hyperlocal, DTC and the food chain to create a new kind of market. If these edge UCs can be addressed in the US, it also greatly expands the global market opportunity as small regional needs resemble the edge.

The consumer benefit of this approach is an awareness of the very different “purpose” of agentic platforms vs Amazon or Walmart.  Imagine identifying which businesses and service providers could address your needs locally. 

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Wallets and Privacy

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I’m on a brief vacation celebrating my 28th anniversary and deep in thought (pic below). What am I thinking of here on the beach? Wallets, Networks, Trust and Privacy.

The Case for Separating Wallets from Identity Providers

As digital identities continue to evolve, one of the most important debates centers around who controls and operates the wallet that holds these identities. Specifically, should wallets be separated from authorities that legally issue “identity”—commonly known as Identity Providers (IdPs)? This issue is particularly relevant in countries like India and Europe, where digital identity initiatives have made significant strides, yet their approaches raise important questions about privacy and control.

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