LONDON—The Payments Association has formed the Innovation Hothouse Bridge, which it said is designed to bridge the gap between payment systems and the new blockchain-based solutions.
According to the organization, the newly formed alliance is in the process of publishing a “green paper” exploring multiple use cases across the digital currency landscape that could arise from the creation of a new digital currencies infrastructure for financial markets. The consortium will publish its recommendations and use cases in the green paper early next year, The Paypers reported.
The consortium is led by fintech experts from The Payments Association, Boston Consulting Group, and paywith.glass.
Financial processes ranging from retail payments to international trade and capital markets infrastructure have inefficiencies that can be solved through digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence, distributed ledger and smart contracts, the Payments Association stated.
Although the proposed central bank digital currencies’ (CBDCs) have the potential to solve these problems and others, their full implementations may be a decade or more away for most countries, so the question becomes how to make the most of the U.K.’s financial infrastructure during the interim period between now and the implementation of fully digital currencies, the consortium said.