OPINION: Here Comes the Internet of Money

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Paul Volcker, the acclaimed former chairman of the Federal Reserve, famously questioned the value of financial innovation. He said he saw the point of the automated teller machine (“more of a mechanical innovation than a financial one”), but that was about it. Financial innovation was an unproductive competition for excess profit and a cause of instability.

If Volcker is right, we’ll soon have another problem on our hands, because a new wave of financial innovation is forming. This one could sweep over traditional banking, traditional payments systems, even the traditional idea of money. You think exotic asset-backed securities were a big deal? That was nothing.

As Bloomberg Markets reports, the revolution in information and computer technology is pointing financial innovation in a new direction — at financial infrastructure and basic services rather than exotic new products. That’s what makes the “Internet of money” so far-reaching.

Source: Bloomberg View (link opens in a new window)

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digital payments, financial inclusion, mobile finance