Euro Banking Association Outlines Use Cases For Digital Currencies

The Euro Banking Association (EBA) announced Monday (May 22) that it issued a new information paper looking at benefits and uses cases of digital currencies for international payments and correspondent banking practices. In a press release, the trade group said the new paper explores business models for distributed ledger technology in relation to payments and transaction banking.

“Having analysed the value that cryptotechnologies could bring to supply chain finance processes, we felt that international payments was another area that could strongly benefit from the use of this technology,” said José Vicente, deputy manager in the Marketing Department (Cards and Payments Unit) at Banco Comercial Português and chair of the EBA’s Working Group on Cryptotechnologies Working Group, in a press release. “Our information paper shows how this technology could support industry players in meeting user expectations regarding speed, transparency and cost. We strongly believe that collaborative initiatives in this area, in particular, could unlock significant value for payment service providers and their customers.”

The group said the analysis looks at the opportunities that distributed ledger technology holds for payment service providers in terms of lowering operating costs, modernizing the international payments value chain and maintaining compliance with key regulatory requirements in markets around the world. The paper also looks at specific use cases, such as distributed KYC registries and low-value P2P/B2C payments.

The Euro Banking Association said the EBA’s Cryptotechnologies Working Group will continue to research the topic of international payments and will evaluate the implementation scenarios in international payments. The exploration of security issues in the use of cryptotechnologies is next on the agenda of the group, it said in the release.