The Next-Gen Currency Project Team will be led by Nacha and the Digital Sovereignty Alliance, the release said. It will explore the use of assets like stablecoins and tokenized deposits for money movement.
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“While digital assets like stablecoins and tokenized deposits are gaining popularity and acceptance, there are also many questions,” Nacha President and CEO Jane Larimer said in the release. “That’s one of the things making this project team so critical. The team has essential work ahead as it looks into the potential implications digital assets might have for all types of payments, as well as tracking developments on the regulatory front.”
Molly Woodman, senior policy advisor for the Digital Sovereignty Alliance and the project team’s co-leader, said in the release: “Digital assets are still new, and the more educational resources available to the payments industry, the better. Creating those resources will be a key goal of this team as we work to bridge the divide between digital assets and more traditional payment methods.”
Stablecoins and tokenized deposits can look deceptively similar from the point of view of a corporate user, as both can represent dollars digitally, potentially settle around the clock, support programmable transactions and operate across blockchain-based infrastructure. Economically, however, they are different products, and banks are starting to figure that out.
A consortium of 21 banks announced Sept. 1 plans to launch a business devoted to issuing their own stablecoin.
Banks are not abandoning tokenized deposits in favor of stablecoins but are rather building both. It’s an attempt to pull together a portfolio of programmable money and eventually direct transactions toward whichever form has the proper combination of liquidity, portability, regulation and reach.
“A tokenized deposit remains a commercial bank liability,” PYMNTS reported Sept. 1. “It gives traditional deposit money blockchain-like programmability while preserving the banking relationship around deposits, liquidity and balance sheet funding. A stablecoin is designed to travel more freely. A properly structured reserve-backed token can move between wallets, platforms and public blockchain networks without requiring every participant to maintain a direct account relationship with the issuing bank.”
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