Get on the Omnibus or Get under it

Dateline: San Francisco, 29th February 2024.The Bank of England’s “omnibus” account was introduced in 2021 to spur innovation and competition in payments. As Huw van Steenis, who was an advisor to the former Governor Mark Carney said at the time, “this is what to watch, not the Bahamas’ sand dollar”, which I took to mean that the use of “stablecoins” in wholesale markets would have far more impact on the structure of the financial services world that a sort of limited-use debit card for the public. For what it’s worth, I agree with him completely which is why I was so interested to see that one of the key players in this space Fnality (formerly known as the Utility Settlement Coin, USC) went live in the UK.ShareIt’s The Fnality CountdownFnality’s backers (who include Goldman Sachs, Barclays, BNP Paribas, BNY Mellon, CIBC, Commerzbank, DTCC, Euroclear, ING, KBC, Mizuho, MUFG Bank, Nasdaq Ventures, Nomura, Sumitomo Mitsui, State Street and WisdomTree) think that tokenised Sterling that can be in cross-border, round-the-clock wholesale transactions will reshape financial markets. Now that it has made its first transactions, it is a good time to look at what might happen when everything is tokenised, when tokenised securities are traded for tokenised money everywhere and all the time.(The company raised $95 million in its second fundraising round in November 2023, with Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas leading the round. Given that the company’s backers are either based in the US or have significant operations there, it is natural…Get on the Omnibus or Get under it