Snippings

Andreessen Horowitz, an investor in Spruce Systems and World amongst others, has responded to a US Treasury Department call for feedback around digital assets by highlighthing the role of decentralised identity and pivacy-preserving technologies such a zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs). (I often highlight these too, but no-one listens to me, least of all the US Treasury.)

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The OpenID Foundation (OIDF) has released two papers on standardizing the use of mobile driver’s licenses (mDL) as verifiable credentials in the U.S., where multiple state authorities issue mDLs in different digital wallets.

The first paper, titled mDL Metadata Requirements to support Know Your Customer (KYC),  introduces a standardized metadata framework to help financial institutions meet regulatory compliance requirements, such as CIP and KYC, by providing machine-readable trust signals.

The second paper, Customer Identification Program (CIP) compliance and OIDF Extended KYC Considerations, builds on the first one, providing an implementation roadmap extending the metadata framework to regulatory and privacy requirements from different regulatory frameworks.

From: OpenID Foundation publishes papers on standardizing US mDLs as verifiable credentials | Biometric Update.

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G20 reportxxx

How bad is it?
Stunningly bad is the only answer I can give.

The Roadmap targets aim to have 75% of all payments, including wholesale, retail, and remittances, credited within one hour, with the remaining 25% within 24 hours.

For wholesale transactions, the FSB shows that there is a long way to go in speeding payment time:

➢54.6% of payments were credited within one hour of payment initiation, a negligible increase from 53.8% in 2023 and far off the 75% target.

Unsurprisingly, retail payments are even more shocking:

➢35.4% of cross-border retail payment services are received within one hour of initiation, a marginal change from 34.2 in 2023 and well off the 75% target

➢67.3% are received within one business day, DECLINING from 74% in 2023!

As to price, the Roadmap’s target for remittances is to reduce the global average cost of remittances to less than 1% by 2027, with no corridors exceeding 3%

Here again, costs fail by large amounts:

➢30% of P2P remittance corridors have costs higher than 3% up from 28% in 2023

➢18% of overall global P2P, B2B, B2P, P2P remittances had costs higher than 3% down from 23%.

From: G20’s Dream of 1-hour Payments and 3% Remittances Falters.

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Set to launch in the first half of 2026, the firm’s US Dollar Payment Token (USDPT) will be built on Solana and issued by Anchorage Digital Bank

From: Western Union to launch stablecoin.

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Felix Goltz, research head at Scientific Beta and co-author of the report, said one of the claims made for AI models was that they could produce outperformance compared with benchmarks of as much as 40 per cent a year.

But after taking account of these unrealistic biases, the outperformance was “more like 3 per cent a year”, he said.

From: AI stockpicking skills greatly exaggerated, fund managers told.

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The government is also exploring more ways to verify the identity of business owners. The London-based Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT) has been developing a prototype of the Digital Company ID. Dozens of organizations have joined the effort, including biometric technology providers such as Daon, Yoti and OneID.
Research commissioned by CFIT has found that more than 80 percent of small and medium-sized enterprises in the UK would not mind paying for a Digital Company ID.

From: Mandatory identity verification for UK companies goes live | Biometric Update.

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A further limiting factor is trust and control. UK consumers are wary of AIS, as the consent requested often is worded to give companies (TPPs – often with unfamiliar names) unlimited access to their account data for an unlimited or unspecified time for unclear reasons.

From: Push it – by Jeremy Light – Agenda: Payments.

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The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has launched a new Aadhaar app to make it easier and safer for citizens to store and share their digital ID. Available on both Android and iOS, the app complements the existing mAadhaar app, which mainly handles verification, downloads, and physical card requests, by offering a fully paperless, secure alternative for carrying Aadhaar digitally on smartphones. UIDAI aims to enhance convenience and reduce reliance on physical documents with this update.

The newly launched Aadhaar app by UIDAI is not meant to replace the existing mAadhaar app but rather complement it. Unlike mAadhaar, it doesn’t include options like downloading a digital Aadhaar card, ordering a PVC card, verifying contact details, or generating a virtual ID. Instead, it functions as a secure digital wallet where users can store, display, and share their Aadhaar credentials safely and conveniently.

From: UIDAI’s Latest Aadhaar App Turns Your Phone Into a Secure Digital ID Wallet: What’s New – Tech.

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Cross-border finance is entering an always-on era. Stablecoin liquidity, institutional infrastructure, and regulatory clarity are aligning to create a global settlement environment that operates continuously across time zones. The line between fiat and digital liquidity is beginning to fade, replaced by an integrated network where both move seamlessly within the same execution layer.

From: The Future of Cross-Border Payments: Stablecoins, Settlement, and the Institutional Shift.

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For comparison, Figure 1 shows Payment Initiation Service (PIS) users alongside AIS users. PIS users passed AIS in August 2023 and have kept climbing. The number of PIS users rose from 6.8m in September 2024 to 9.7m in September 2025, a 43% increase.

From: Push it – by Jeremy Light – Agenda: Payments.

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