SPEECH
SVERIGES RIKSBANK
DATE:
2021-10-06
SE-103 37 Stockholm
SPEAKER: (Brunkebergstorg 11)
First Deputy Governor Cecilia Skingsley
LOCALITY:
Swedbank (digitally)
Tel +46 8 787 00 00
Fax +46 8 21 05 31
registratorn@riksbank.se
www.riksbank.se
Building payment systems for our
grandchildren*
Payments at the heart of our everyday lives
Firstly, thanks for inviting me this morning to speak about payments and the
infrastructure that makes them possible.1 A topic that currently commands quite a lot
of time at both the Swedish banks and the Riksbank, due to large projects aimed
at basically building the future payment systems. I will say more about this
shortly.
Many of us tend to pay without thinking so much about what actually happens.
On a typical day, a first interaction with the payment system could be preloading
your public transport card from your bank account. At work, you use your mobile
phone to send - or 'swish' as we call it after the domestic mobile payment service
- a contribution to a colleagues 50th birthday present. Later, lunch is paid for with
a bank card that you may also use to buy groceries with on your way home.
Back from work, you may still have a few payments to make. In the evening,
perhaps you log on to your internet bank to pay a couple of bills. Also, if the month
has not been too costly, a sum of money may be placed in your savings account or
even invested in the stock market. Then, maybe you round off the day by some
visits to your favourite online shops paying by choosing among the methods on
offer.
It is a complex piece of machinery that allows those payments to be made. In
Sweden, this machinery is now undergoing what appears to be the largest
overhaul in generations. The banks are working on modernising the entire retail
payment infrastructure, harmonising it within the Nordics. And during next year, the
*
I would like to thank Anders Mölgaard Pedersen and André Reslow for their help with writing this speech, and
Ann Börestam, Gabriela Guibourg, Eva Hellström, Elizabeth Nilsson, Tommy Persson, Björn Segendorff, Marianne
Sterner, Johanna Stenkula von Rosen and Gary Watson for valuable comments.
1
To be precise, this speech is not only about payments, but touches upon also security settlement
infrastructures. Not to bother you further with strenuous terms, I will be a little relaxed about my terminology and use
'payment infrastructures' also when I mean 'financial market infrastructures', etc.
1 [15]
Riksbank is launching a new service for settlement of instant payments that we
call RIX-INST.
Also, very recent, the Riksbank made a decision to take preparatory steps to
connect Swedish krona to T2 and TARGET2-Securities, T2S. The latter are the
Eurosystem's platforms for large-value transfers between banks and settlement of
security transactions, respectively. We will now perform an in-depth analysis of all
relevant aspects that will provide the basis for deciding whether the Riksbank should
enter into contractual negotiations with the Eurosystem.
Joining T2 and T2S is expected to benefit the participants of the Riksbank's current
settlement services. For instance, they will gain from increased cost-efficiency and
harmonisation, that is, alignment with European standards and practices. In the
end, that should also lead to improvements for banks' customers. Importantly, a
decision to connect to T2 and T2S should be taken into account by the Swedish
banks in their future business and investment planning.
My speech today will be about the Riksbank initiatives just referred to and the
motives behind them. First, however, I plan to take you on a short tour of the
history of payments. This is because I believe there are lessons to be learned here.
Lessons that over time have formed the way that we at the Riksbank think about
payments and the financial infrastructure in general. As such, they have played
into also our recent decisions, of course.
Looking at the past, the key observations that I make are the following:
 Firstly, for a well-functioning monetary system the trust of money is key. A
credible issuer can ensure this. Moreover, converging on one monetary
unit in a given country, what economists refer to as the uniformity of
money, increases simplicity and efficiency.

Secondly, technological developments, often far away from payments, are
an important driver of change. This goes hand in hand with innovation of
ideas, humanity's ability to react creatively to recognised needs.
Sometimes this can even lead to the emergence of new types of business.
 Thirdly, the private and public sector complement one another by filling
different roles. While the public sector provides trust and stability, the
private sector takes care of innovation. Throughout history, then,
occasionally the public sector has had to take the lead in creating changes that are
beneficial to society.

Fourthly, network and scale effects are important factors to consider
within payments. They generate barriers to entry, but also leave room for
efficiency gains. Though not new, both effects may have been
accentuated by the digitalisation of payments.
After the historical walkthrough, I will explain those observations further and put
them into the context of our current work on developing the payment
infrastructure. Finally, I will say a few words about the Riksbank's e-krona project and our
involvement in international work to improve cross-border payments. Those
initiatives are targeted more at end-users of payment services. Yet, both can equally
well be related to the lessons just highlighted.
The history of payments - fasten your seatbelts!
With the brief time I have at my disposal now, a tour through the history of
payments must be limited to picking out a few main developments. However, for
those with more time to spend, I can certainly recommend this subject for further
study. In addition to useful insights into how we got to where we are now, I dare
to say that it is packed with drama unfolding around great historical events. I will
cover a few of them here.
From barter to money
In the beginning, there was nothing! Well, in fact there was, but that 'nothing'
was pure barter. To acquire a good or service not produced by yourself, you
needed to come up with a good or service that the seller wanted to have. When
people started to specialise in what they produced, it was a great move forward
for mankind - but to trade with each other was difficult.
Barter, then, needed to develop. What happened is that one leg of the trade
increasingly took the form of a money-like asset. By that I mean something which (i)
is countable or measurable, (ii) has value as it is accepted by most people and (iii)
can be stored by the seller for later purchases. Early on, various assets performed
this role. In the end, however, precious metals like gold and silver came to
dominate as means of payment.
Paying for goods and services with gold or silver was not ideal, though, due to the
process of weighing required. The solution to this was coins, as the people in Lydia
discovered around 650 B.C. Coins smoothed the check-out, so to speak, and you
can probably imagine how ancient retailers were quite happy with this invention.
Yet, without an assigned and trusted issuer, they still required the coins to have
intrinsic value, i.e., to be made of precious metals.
There were other problems with coins. Firstly, they were often debased by mixing
the gold or silver with less valuable metals. Also 'clipping', that is, shaving off part
of the material, was fairly widespread. This led to a phenomenon that many years
later became known as Gresham's law. It says that in commerce 'bad coins' drive
out 'good coins' as the latter are kept for saving purposes. Mistrust in the coin
system, or even its entire breakdown, was often the unhappy consequence.
Another issue was the plethora of mints that continued to grow in number as
technology spread. Fast forward, and at the mid-medieval period it had become
fashionable for every European kingdom and principality to issue its own coins.
With production costs lower than the coins' value, this was a useful source of
income to finance the frequent wars at the time. But with multiple coins drifting
around and uncertainty about their true value, it was essentially a mess.
However, where there is chaos innovative minds see opportunities. During the
12th century, in the northern part of Italy, a new type of institution emerged.
These specialised in exchanging foreign coins for local ones, not unlike present
day foreign exchange dealers. This reduced the problem with the many coins
causing much confusion. Even more advanced, some of the new institutions
started to swap coins for bills of exchange that could be used in local trade.
The medieval coin-exchange providers brought banking to Europe, it is often said.
Initially, they only handled deposits, as charging interest was viewed as usury by
the powerful church. However, with Italy the epicentre of European trade, you
could still run a proper business facilitating transactions only. Later, the House of
Medici and its peers took banking as well as bookkeeping to the next level.
Around the same time, the famous Knights Templar were also chipping in with
innovations in payments and banking. They provided services for long-distance
payments, one of them a system akin to international cheques. Europeans involved in
the Crusades were faced with a long and dangerous journey to the Holy Land,
where carrying valuables was risky. Instead, the Knight Templars offered their
clients to deposit their belongings at home against a letter. This - the cheque,
basically - could be presented to other Templars upon arrival to 'withdraw funds'.
The Templars also provided loans to various nobles and monarchs. The most
heavily in debt was King Philip of France, who was one day denied further
borrowing to finance the Hundred Years War against the English. Infuriated, and jealous
of the wealth of the order, the king accused the Templars of heresy and ordered
their arrest. Ultimately, this led to the latter's downfall, with many Templars being
burnt at the stake. Although we sometimes disagree, we can all appreciate that
today's public-private sector relationship is more stable and civilised.
Despite new banking services, the problems with the coin system were not
resolved. In 1609, in Amsterdam, a trade centre with many currencies in circulation,
the city council decided enough was enough and set up Amsterdamsche
Wisselbank. The public bank was tasked with estimating the value of the 500 or so
different coins that were around and exchanging them with its own currency, the
rijksdaalder. By having a single currency, the highly chaotic system was improved,
and the bank quickly became a hub for settling international payments.2
The modern banknote
In Sweden, problems with the coin system were of a different kind. At that time,
Swedish coins were made of copper, not gold or silver. As a consequence, they
had to be quite sizeable, as their value still depended on the metal used.
Obviously, this made daily purchases a fairly heavy exercise. But again, great ideas
seemed to come to our rescue when Latvian-born Dutchman Johan Palmstruch,
with the blessing of Charles X Gustav, set up Stockholms Banco to issue the first
'modern' European banknotes. This was in 1661.
However, Mr Palmstruch hadn't thought it through properly. Or at least, he had
underestimated the collateral needed to operate a business like that. When
people started to queue up outside the bank to have their notes redeemed, he
quickly ran out of metal. The bank was liquidated in 1667, and poor Mr
Palmstruch was imprisoned, though reprieved from his initial death sentence. The year
after, in 1668, Stockholms Banco was nationalised and Sveriges Riksbank was
established.3
Other countries followed suit and established similar note-issuing institutions. A
prominent one was the Bank of England, founded in 1694 to assist in financing
England's participation in the Nine Years' War. For centuries, the Bank of England
was a privately-owned company with the exclusive right to issue banknotes. Being
publicly backed, the notes did not take long to become a trusted and widely used
means of payment in London. They should soon also serve other purposes as I will
explain shortly.
Sadly, the very first deputy governor of 'the Bank', my British counterpart three
hundred-odd years ago, Michael Godfrey, did not experience that. Long-distance
payments were still a mess, and in 1695, this brave man was on duty to pay the
troops in Flanders. Invited for dinner by the king, the two men decided to visit the
nearby trenches by Namur, in modern-day Belgium. Here, Mr Godfrey literally
forgot to keep his head down when cannonballs were fired. Times and duties of
central bankers have changed, I note with great relief.
Outside England, multiple issuers of banknotes were allowed, with the United
States as a prominent example. The latter's monetary history is rich and dramatic.
One particular period was the 'free banking era', prompted by President Jackson's
refusal in 1832 to renew the charter of the only nationwide bank at the time. As a
result, note-issuing banks mushroomed, and hundreds of notes circulated around
the country at varying discounts. The 'experiment' was ended by the outbreak of
the Civil War when a national banking system was established.
Sweden also provides a case in point. Following the collapse of Stockholms Banco,
the newly founded Riksbank was not allowed to issue banknotes until 1701.4
Then, as commercial banks started to emerge in the 1830s, they were granted
similar concessions. Over a period, notes from ten to fifteen issuers were in
circulation, causing much confusion. This was brought to a halt with the Sveriges
Riksbank Act from 1897, which ensured the Riksbank its current monopoly - with a
unified national currency as a result.5
The rise of financial infrastructures
As the number of banks surged, so did the need for structure. In London around
1770, 'walk clerks' ran between banks to clear and settle cheques. One day, the
story goes, two of them were having lunch at the Five Bells tavern in Lombard
Street. Tired after a busy morning, one came with the suggestion that all clerks
could meet for lunch at the Five Bells to exchange cheques - and the 'modern'
clearing house was born.6
Over time, procedures improved markedly. While settlement of banks' obligations
had for many years taken place in coins, the Bank of England's notes now allowed
for a safer and more efficient process. Later, the Bank of England started to offer
account settlement, for many years on physical ledgers and later in digital form.
Moving from pub clearing and settlement in coins to highly advanced electronic
systems may not have entirely eliminated risks. Yet, few - if anyone - would deny
that the efficiency gains have been enormous.
Central banks around the world followed suit and set up similar arrangements to
clear and settle payments. In the United States, the Federal Reserve System in
1918 established the first version of Fedwire, its system for transfers of funds
between banks. What was special about Fedwire is that it used the telegraph lines
which now connected the entire country. This technological innovation made it
possible to settle payments within a short time, even between banks that held
accounts in different regional banks in the Fed system.
In Sweden, the establishment of Postgirot was an important step. Postgirot was,
in essence, a public bank within the Swedish postal service. It was created in 1925
by the government, which was unimpressed by the then private service offerings
for paying remotely - basically sending cheques and banknotes by post! With the
infrastructure in place, transfers via Postgirot quickly gained ground. Private banks
took some time to react, but did so compellingly when in 1959 they founded
Bankgirocentralen - the future leading clearing house in Sweden.
Bankgirot also kick-started a long tradition of Swedish banks working together in
the fields of payments. Numerous are their common services targeted at
end-users, that is, households or businesses as payers or payees. Many were developed
and then operated by Bankgirot, which became more than a pure clearing house.
Today, Bankomat (ATMs) and Getswish (instant mobile payment service) are
other examples of joint ventures that allow their owners, the banks, to offer joint
payment services to customers.
By collaborating on rules and standards for common payment instruments, banks
enabled payments between their customers. Basically, you were not limited to
making payments within the same bank, a closed-loop system, as it is sometimes
called. Broadening the network of payers and payees provided a reach that
increased the efficiency of the overall payment system. Increased digitalisation also
meant that sharing infrastructure and development costs was cost-effective for
the banks.
Most recently, the major Swedish banks have joined forces with Danish and
Finnish equals to build a Nordic clearing platform - the P27 initiative. As well as
further exploiting economies of scale, the intention is to smooth payments across
borders within the Nordics. This could be promoted further if complemented by
common Nordic payment solutions or by making payments between existing
domestic schemes feasible.7
Lessons learned
Drawing conclusions based on a period spanning millennia can only be strongly
subjective. Yet, certain factors stand out to me as constants during the history of
payments. Some may even be more relevant than ever, one could argue. Allow
me now to elaborate further on my four basic lessons, before I turn to our
ongoing work to develop the current infrastructure.
Trust and uniformity of money is essential
Firstly, for money to work properly it needs to have the trust of its users.
Otherwise, buyers and sellers will look for other mediums of exchange. This increases
transaction costs, hampering trade and economic activity. Historically, trust has
benefitted from a credible issuer, that is, from money being a claim on a party
that everyone expects to honour its obligations. This speaks in favour of giving the
right to issue money to the state with its powers of taxation. This is also what
happened in most countries with the Bank of England as an early role model.
In addition, I also believe in the value to society of having one commonly agreed
monetary unit in a given jurisdiction. Over time, this has become a reality almost
everywhere. In Europe, countries and their inhabitants have converged on one
currency - with the euro area as a special case, of course. In the United States,
developments have been similar. The 'free banking era' showcased the impossibility
of keeping track of the values of notes by different issuers. In the end, they were
replaced by Federal Reserve banknotes, and a common currency was established.
During our lifetime and in our part of the world, it has been like that - one
country, one monetary unit. However, a few years ago, technology started to challenge
this, at least conceptually. We are now seeing the emergence of cryptoassets in
various forms, without a public issuer, claiming to be money. Yet, most of them
vary significantly in value, which means that their purchasing power also
fluctuate. Consequently, cryptoassets mainly function as investment assets and not as a
means of payment in the way we use, for example, kronor, euros and dollars.
One innovation in the crypto world is so-called stablecoins, which are
cryptocurrencies where the issuer promises that the value follows the value of another
asset, such as dollars. In this way, the stablecoin issuer uses the trust in already
established currencies. So far, stablecoins have mainly been used by those active in
the cryptoasset market, but there is the ambition to broaden their acceptance as
a means of payment. Therefore, the global financial standards-setting
organisations have initiated extensive regulatory and monitoring work to ensure that
stablecoins do not threaten financial stability. For my part, I note that the interest in
stablecoins show the need for the existing payment systems to be improved to
meet people's needs for efficient and cheap payments. More about that later.
To conclude, having a credible issuer of money, and one single monetary unit
within a jurisdiction, seems to be the prevailing system throughout history. With a
trusted issuer, which has been the task of central banks for the past 300 years, the
intrinsic value of money doesn't matter. We accept that banknotes and coins are
just paper and some fairly cheap pieces of metal. In addition, quoting prices in a
host of different units that may fluctuate in value will never be efficient. The
importance of monetary uniformity to a country's prosperity can hardly be
overestimated.
Technology and innovation of ideas drive change
My second lesson concerns the drivers behind evolution in payments. Based on
history, one important force for changes has clearly been technological
developments, often in industries far away from financial services. For example, the
printing method invented by Gutenberg in the 15th century was a prerequisite for going
from coins to paper notes. Without the ability to mass print standardised notes,
Mr Palmstruch and his followers would not have been able to revolutionise the
payments market in the way they did.
Similarly, the telegraph not only improved settlement of payments within the Fed
system, but also transformed long-distance foreign exchange trading. Some of you
may have heard the expression 'trading the cable'. The phrase had its origin in the
mid-19th century when the transatlantic telegraph service radically upgraded
international communication. Obviously, this hugely impacted the quoting of
exchange rates across the world. Since then, the FX rate between British Pound
Sterling and the U.S. dollar has been referred to as 'the cable'.
The way that technological developments impact payments has been particular
clear in recent years. The internet and improvements in telecommunications have
brought new ways of purchasing goods and services in the form of e-commerce
and mobile commerce. Along with this, we have seen large shifts in how
consumers pay for their purchases and how we transfer money to one another. It is a bit
of a platitude, but still worth highlighting that the speed of innovation has been
greater than ever in recent years.
A further driver of changes has been humanity's ability to see needs and
demonstrate entrepreneurism. The history of payments is full of examples where people
with great ideas have solved problems or inefficiencies in the market. From time
to time, this has even led to new types of financial business that we recognise
today. Lately, a trend has been the emergence of new suppliers of payment services
outside of the bank domain, in Europe facilitated by legislation. Their
heterogeneity is large, but so is the potential of some of them.
Private and public sector do what they do best
My third takeaway regards the role of the private and public sectors. While their
roles may have changed over time, they have invariably explored their
comparative advantages. Throughout history, the private sector has showcased that it is an
excellent innovator and understands consumer needs. Where there is a problem,
it often provides a solution. The primary role of the public sector revolves around
trust, universal services to all citizens, and security.
One fundamental role of central banks today is to facilitate payments between
banks. While the predecessor to our current clearing and settlement system may
have started life in a London tavern, it later moved into the central banks. The
main reason for this is to help banks settle payments using accounts at the central
bank, i.e. in central bank money, thus abolishing the credit risks that could arise if
they instead used commercial bank money. Central bank money is generally
regarded as the safest settlement asset that could be used.
While the private sector innovates, the public sector needs to be ready to 'step in'
and correct market failure, provide coordination, guidance, and exercise its
comparative advantages from time to time. In my historical walkthrough, I gave you
some cases of this: The foundation of the Riksbank on the ruins of Stockholms
Banco; Postgirot, a rare example of the private sector failing to accommodate
consumer needs; and Amsterdamsche Wisselbank was an example of the
government trying to solve the problem of not having uniformity of money.
Network and scale effects as important as ever
My fourth and final lesson relates to network and scale effects, and the barriers to
entry they pose. Providers of new payments solutions need to invest money for
development, setting up the infrastructure and marketing. Hence, there is a high
fixed cost associated with market entry. Furthermore, to have a successful
payments method, you need to have both payers and payees on board, and you need
to reach a critical mass to cover your costs. We say that payments are a scale
business.
However, reaching a critical mass can be difficult since the value of the payment
method is determined by the number of users. In economics, we often use the
term network effects to describe the situation where a user's value from a
product or service depends on the number of users. A classic example is that of the
telephone: Two telephones enable only one link between participants. Adding a
third telephone allows for two more connections, and adding a fourth telephone
enables three new connections. Hence, each new participant grows the value of
the network more than the last one did.
The same holds in the payments market. Take the mobile application Swish that
was introduced in 2012 as an example. In the beginning, few of us had Swish, and
it did not provide much value. However, as more people adopted Swish, its value
increased since the number of connections increased. Swish is also good example
of the benefits of banks working together. By launching a joint service, the
Swedish banks managed to benefit from network and scale effects. Moreover, sharing
infrastructure and development costs is cost-effective and makes it easier to
reach the critical mass needed to take advantage of economies of scale.
It is also important to point out that the uniformity of money is closely related to
network effects. In a situation with multiple currencies present, we would not be
sure if the merchant or payee would accept the money held. That would mean
having to carry different kinds in our wallets, establishing exchange rates and so
on, all very inefficient. It is then likely that some would limit themselves to a
subset of currencies. It is then undoubtedly harder to achieve the benefits from
network effects.
While network and scale effects generate efficiency gains, they also create
barriers to entry. Or put differently, together network and scale effects often result in
a 'winner takes all' situation. These entry barriers, thus, manifest themselves in
possible concerns about the level of competition. Therefore, the public sector
needs to balance the perils of what is often called a natural monopoly with the
gains from joint services or sole providers. Hence, we need to ensure sound
regulation and oversight.
Network and scale effects are as important as ever. With globalisation, the
network effects are moving from the domestic market to the global. Regarding scale
effects, I would argue that digitalisation has increased the fixed costs and lowered
the variable costs, thereby increasing the large-volume advantage.
Next-generation payment systems
I will now turn to the present and focus the remaining part of my speech on the
work at the Riksbank on developing the current infrastructure - building the
payment systems of tomorrow, if I may say so. Naturally, this is not a solo task, but a
joint effort involving many stakeholders, public and private, domestic and foreign.
I will concentrate, however, on the Riksbank's rationales for this work. They are to
a large extent related to the lessons that I just highlighted.
Before I do this, let me briefly reflect on what I said earlier about the higher pace
of innovation in recent years. For those in the commercial sphere of payments,
this has increased the risk of 'falling behind', we often hear. You need to master
the new opportunities offered by the 'era of digitalisation' to avoid losing market
shares. Add to this that network and scale effects tend to benefit suppliers that
are first with a new solution or service.
Here my point is that the same factor has also led to demands on central banks to
be as vigilant as ever. With technology barriers being put under pressure and
market trends swiftly changing, 'wait and see' is a risky strategy. Developments that
cause concern could build up quicker than before and become irreversible within
a short time. Add to this that system changes may have a certain lead time, and it
is clear that central banks need to act quickly, too.
With the Riksbank mandated to promote a safe and efficient payment
mechanism, a task that I take very seriously, those are obviously important
considerations to bear in mind.
The future highway for instant payments
One recent example where we, at the Riksbank, saw a need for early intervention
was with respect to instant payments. By instant payments, I mean transfers of
funds between customers' accounts within a few seconds. Not many years ago,
use cases for those payments were weak and so was interest in them. This has
clearly changed, however, and you no longer trigger much of a discussion by
claiming that instant payments will someday be the new normal.
In Sweden today, instant payments are settled in BiR, Betalningar i Realtid, a
payment system owned and operated by Bankgirot. At present, they comprise only
payments using the Swish app. In BiR, settlement of obligations between banks
takes place in commercial bank money, not in risk-free claims on the Riksbank.
The Riksbank and the banks have worked out a solution where the banks make
special BiR provisions in RIX that act as a guarantee for the payments. However, in
a future where a considerable amount of payments will be instant, this is not a
sufficient arrangement and could imply risks to financial stability.
As a consequence, and after a thorough analysis, the Riksbank decided to develop
a new service for instant payments. RIX-INST, as we call it, will be based on the
ECB's Target Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) platform that was launched a few
years ago to settle instant payments in euro and potentially other currencies. The
service will allow banks to settle instant payments between themselves in central
bank money, 24/7 and all year round. On top of RIX-INST, banks can then develop
similar services towards their customers.
Sharing a platform with other central banks, as we basically do here, has several
advantages. First of all, it entails efficiency gains due to the scale effects that I
referred to before. Importantly, not only the fixed development and operating costs
will be spread on larger volumes, but also future costs to protect against
cyber-attacks and the like. One of the few other undisputed predictions within payments
is that in the future those costs will go up.
Secondly, connecting to a platform like TIPS, based on standards that are applied
across the European payment market, facilitates harmonisation. This will benefit
Swedish banks and their customers doing business in other European countries.
Essentially, they will be able to streamline their payment processes at home and
abroad. In general, harmonisation of standards also serves to promote
competition in the payment market, in my view.
Thirdly, competition will be further enhanced by the fact that RIX-INST is provided
in a competitively neutral manner. Decisions about access and prices will be made
free of any commercial interests that may characterise private systems of the
same kind. This is particularly important in light of the entry barriers arising from
network and scale effects and taking into account the future appeal of this specific
type of payment, instant transfers of funds.
A brief update on the status of the project:8 The new service is planned to go live
in spring next year. I believe that we are well on track, not least due to good
collaboration with our fellow central bankers within the Eurosystem, as well as the
Swedish banks. At the same time, we are also exploring the potential to use the
TIPS platform for instant payments