Australia’s digital payments future hinging on regulation

InvestorDaily

Australia has the technology to change the payments and settlements ecosystem, but its regulatory posture is the bottleneck to implementation. According to Kraken’s general manager of Australia and rest of world, Jonathon Miller, the RBA’s Project Acacia has already shown what can be achieved when tokenised assets, money and settlement infrastructure are tested together – and the next step is creating a pathway for viable applications to reach the market. “Australia needs a clear pathway through which viable products can graduate from controlled testing into licensed, ongoing commercial operation,” Miller told Investor Daily.

However, he believes Australia’s major banks have little incentive to introduce new competition into payments and financial infrastructure. “To drive meaningful adoption and support real economic activity, the framework needs to allow interoperability and participation between banks, stablecoin issuers, exchanges and payment providers.” Internationally, the model beginning to emerge is not banks versus crypto, Miller said, as there is growing appetite among traditional financial institutions to collaborate with digital asset companies as stablecoins and blockchain technology become part of the infrastructure connecting markets, payments and settlement.

The rest of this article can be found at investordaily.com.au.