Liquidity Coordination > Faster Settlement When building tokenized architectures with stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and real-time settlement solutions, the most obvious benefit is speed. Blockchains settle faster than SWIFT, ACH, RTP, FedNow, and the rest. I’d argue the larger advantage is coordination. These networks can align obligations, liquidity, collateral, and settlement across many forms of money far more effectively than legacy rails. Tokenization across disconnected networks often increases liquidity requirements. It adds new silos. That makes the use case worse, not better. When liquidity is fragmented: More tokenization = more trapped liquidity. The money may settle faster, but the routes become more disjointed. Coordinating across all the responsible parties takes longer. The real win comes from infrastructure that meets businesses where they already are: optimizing obligations before liquidity is consumed, routing them cleanly, and avoiding extra steps or new trapped pools. The company that issues the most tokens will not win. The company that coordinates settlement across networks and currency types will.

Commerce operates 24/7, but treasury and liquidity management still largely run on banking hours, batch processes and in prefunded, fragmented infrastructure. At @FiservForum on Tuesday, August 18th myself, Joseph Virgilio (UBank) and Anaje Leslie explore the topic of Money Made to Move Around the Clock. Where stablecoins, tokenized deposits and smart contract liquidity management allow money to settle, optimize and earn yield 24/7/365. We'll cover: - How 24/7 always-on infra makes a bank money - Delays with APIs, Core Ledgers and how digital assets improves the flow - Compliance processes needed for open-source, onchain rails - Programmable escrow and beneficial controls the technology brings Reducing trapped liquidity, improving capital efficiency and net interest margins for banks credit unions and their customers. Creating a better experience. Money Made to Move Around the Clock Tuesday, August 18th | 4:15PM - 5:00PM PT | Fiserv Forum, Las Vegas

The Liquidity Mobility Problem Another fair question came from a bank CFO this week: “If I move money from our treasury into tokenized deposits, how is that different from pre-funding an account? I already do this for ACH, RTP, cards, and more. Isn’t this just another trapped bucket of funds?” Fair question. Tokenized deposits do reserve liquidity in their own pool. The difference is what that pool unlocks. Tokenized deposits become your bank’s single, central route to: i) earn yield ii) instantly reroute treasury funds to the exact rail you need, anytime From one tokenized deposit account you can deploy treasury liquidity 24/7/365 for ACH, RTP, SWIFT, card payments, or loan disbursements. One account. Many purposes. Optionality without sacrificing yield. The same liquidity reusable across every use case.

The bottleneck in tokenized finance isn’t tokenizing assets. It’s financing the liquidity those assets demand. As tokenized deposits, money-market funds, real-world assets, receivables, and securities accelerate onchain, the system generates sharper, more frequent liquidity gaps. The window between the moment an asset moves and the moment cash is actually available. Stablecoins solve movement. Stablecoins don't solve liquidity. Stablecoins are pre-funded by design. The liquidity they can deliver is permanently capped by the reserves already sitting on a balance sheet. Stablecoins are gift cards. Tokenized deposits are credit cards. Tokenized deposits let a bank create liquidity on demand, extending credit for just-in-time settlement the instant it is needed. Creating elastic liquidity vs. prefunded liquidity. For every asset on a bank’s balance sheet, the competitive question becomes: “How do I borrow against this asset instantly?” The winners will be those who can turn balance-sheet access, credit capacity, and liquidity creation into real-time, 24/7 settlement. Any funds that sit idle, neither working for the bank nor for the customer, around the clock, has become a liability.

The Race to Own Idle Capital Businesses, banks and platforms are trying to reduce the amount of cash, liquidity, collateral and working capital that is trapped around the payment process today so their balance sheets become more efficient. This is the biggest advantage of tokenized money. Merchants want to reduce FX exposure, settlement latency and treasury friction across their global businesses. Banks want to control reserves, issuance, liquidity and governance on their deposits and how money moves through their balance sheet. Social platforms, gig economies, and prediction markets want their customers’ cash and stablecoin collateral to earn yield inside their own treasuries. Rather than sitting idle and requiring them to pre-fund user accounts from their treasury every time customers earn. Fees around digital money are on a race to the bottom. Earning a few basis points every time money moves won't cut it and customers are catching on. The most valuable business will not be the one that moves the most money. It will be the one that owns the destination of idle money.

Go outside. Hoop with your friends. Every year on my birthday I throw a 3v3 tournament that brings together people from many chapters of my life: high school, college, work and rec leagues. We hoop, talk trash and block everything out for a few hours. Moments like this make the hard work and long hours worth it. Nothing. And I mean nothing, is better than hooping with your friends.

With high school and college sports seasons kicking off next month, this partnership couldn’t be more timely. @Fiserv's Embedded Banking & Payments stack is enabling free athlete wallets and debit cards, allowing high school and college athletes, where permitted by law, to receive payments through @Datavault_ai's NIL Exchange and monetize their name, image, and likeness (NIL). Datavault AI’s Marketplace makes it easy for sponsors to pay athletes market rates for NIL activities. It provides athletes with a simple, no-cost way to receive, manage, and access funds earned through sponsor relationships. Typical marketplace fees can range from 10–30% of an athlete’s revenue. This solution offers a favorable alternative, enabling athletes to keep more of the money they earn.

Tokenized money and DeFi have strong promises to bring businesses and customers high yield opportunities, promising sometimes 6%-15% yield paid out daily, weekly or monthly. However, one of the key lessons we have learned in traditional finance is that the best yield assets are often not the best collateral assets. Assets used as collateral must be continuously priced, highly liquid and capable of being sold immediately during periods of market stress. Money assets secure the network. Yield assets enhance returns. Best Collateral: - Bank balance sheet cash - Tokenized deposits: digital bank cash used to borrow against - Stablecoins with 100% reserves - Treasury products: U.S. gov bonds used to borrow against Best Yield: - Customer IOUs - Lending money to banks for high interest - Private credit: lending money to companies for higher interest than banks - Earning crypto by lending/staking to blockchains DeFi enables lending and borrowing products that are cheaper, settle faster and can give anyone in the world access to these services. That is a huge product advantage. However, many DeFi protocols mistake treating yield assets as money assets. That works in normal markets, but is often exposed during times of stress when liquidity pricing and redemption assumptions are rested. The teams who keep these two separate will offer the best product at the safest, highest rates possible.

Stablecoins are a global financial bootstrapping mechanism. Consider @tether, who initially started as a stablecoin issuer but has now become one of the most important financial institutions in the world with a reserve pool, distribution network, investment vehicle, payments infrastructure and more. Stablecoins were the wedge to enable global dollar access to emerging and last mile markets. London's Big Bang in 1986 is a useful comparison. London's Big Bang ended fixed commissions, allowed foreign ownership of assets and eliminated inefficient third parties who priced gouged customers on trading fees. New institutions began to emerge that learned to combine capital, technology, liquidity and distribution in new ways: - Investment banks: @GoldmanSachs, @Barclays, @MorganStanley, @MerrillLynch - Global merchants: Warburg, Rothchilds, Lazard - City of London: trading volume surged for equities and bonds Giving customers lower trading costs and bigger profits. The common question on stablecoins is how big can they become? The better question is what changes once tokenized dollars exist at global scale. An immediate change is fiercer competition for reserves, distribution, liquidity routing, settlement and global accounts. The best product wins and customers have better experiences with money. Stablecoins and tokenized money will not replace bank accounts. They will become the bootstrap mechanism for global financial institutions, just as the Big Bang created global institutions that London had never seen before in the 80's.

Today, @Fiserv joins 140 leading companies, including @Visa, @Mastercard, @coinbase, @BlackRock, @BNYglobal, @CitizensBank, @dbsbank, @usbank, as a partner in Open Standard, the newly formed independent company supporting Open USD. An intentional move towards credible neutrality for stablecoins to be useful for all businesses, banks and people across the world. Some characteristics of Open USD: - No mint or redemption fees - No caps - Yield shared to participants by default instead of the issuer - Reserves maintained by global banks that meet US regulatory requirements We at Fiserv believe building out capabilities in digital assets, stablecoins and tokenized deposits is a network effort and no one company can go at this alone. We're excited to be part of an excellent consortium building the financial settlement rails of the future. To learn more, check out joinopenstandard.com.

Tokenized money and stablecoins enable any bank or platform company to become a global fintech. A community bank or credit union positioning themselves as a regional, trusted community member of the funds for the businesses in their region isn't good enough anymore. The platform companies like @DoorDash, @Walmart, @McDonalds have lost so much revenue in FX fees and slippage. Sometimes as high as 6-15%/transaction. Which eats at their operational costs. Fintechs offer faster settlement, more global access, on an experience that feels like a social or chat app. Tokenized money enables these businesses to succeed in handling multi-currencies. Do you have Euro dollars, Mexican pesos, Singapore dollars that you would love to have in your favorite US dollar account? This technology allows you to hold all of these currencies in one account for a fraction of a penny. One of the more profitable businesses in the world is corresponding banking. Where a bank sponsors transactions for applications to send payments across the world while taking a fee of 2-5%. Historically the 10 largest banks in the US have been the only ones to benefit in this business model. Enter tokenized money: Move fiat offchain -> tokenized deposits Move fiat onchain -> stablecoins A small bank in South Florida, with a large Argentinian population, can loan money to a retailer in their home country for making creative Messi T-Shirts, and sell them to their fans attending the World Cup in Miami for a fraction of a penny. A professional @Uber driver can have one account that holds US dollars when they are in the states and Euro dollars when they are giving rides in Germany. Uber can settle both of those currencies in minutes and have no reason to up-charge international drivers. At @Fiserv, we're making this possible for these businesses with what we are building with Digital Assets that is set to go live this summer.

There is a naive view that tokenized money lowers costs for banks, when in reality the technology just reallocate rents. Rewarding those who provide efficiency across the stack. Float turns to immediacy. Banks used to earn on time, holding customer balances over time with no changes made them a killing. Tokenized money compresses settlement. Float disappears. The rent goes to whoever can supply instant liquidity on demand. The more you delay settlement, the more likely you are to lose depositors. Owning deposits was once enough. Now, value accrues to controlling where money can go, under custom rules and at fast speeds. Moving from stock or batch balances to flows with movement and permissions. Banks thrived on bundling payments, custody, compliance and lending in one lump sum offering. Tokenization splits them apart. Each layer is contestable and rents migrate to the least commoditized layers: compliance, orchestration and liquidity optimizations. Institutions used to resolve risk and exceptions over time. In a 24/7 system though, rules must be encoded upfront. Rent accrues to those who design trusted, programmable policies that can fit any customers needs. Tokenized money doesn't save costs. It causes frictions in systems that sat on services in the past to work more for customers around the clock.

Stablecoins enable faster and cheaper global payments, but they also shift how foreign exchange (FX) margins are charged to merchants. Global payments today are routed through banks with international licenses, across closed-looped, cloud based ledgers, with platform fees at each route. Merchants pay the most on FX slippage, hidden fees and delayed settlement. Stablecoins allow any merchant to be their own bank. - Value can move on a single rail, instead of hoping across systems - Conversion happens once at the edge, instead of multiple times in transit - Settlement is atomic, not sequential A large merchant like @DoorDash, @Uber, @Walmart and @amazon can: - Settle directly in local currency equivalents globally - Convert currency once - Treasury teams can manage fewer trapped balances across regions - Enable payments in countries you typically couldn't afford to settle in Banks with global licenses still have a huge advantage and will prosper with stablecoins. But together, banks and merchants now cut out the inefficient middle men in-between them.

Is yield the real product for digital assets? People and businesses move money for one reason: Utility. This means: - Earning yield - Improving liquidity - Reducing cost of capital So if a depositor (bank customer) can earn more, access funds instantly and move it globally... they're gone. Stablecoins have pushed expectations around speed and mobility. DeFi around yield. Now tokenized deposits introduce a way where you can get both without leaving your current banking system. Not all yield is equal: - Bank balance sheets (safer) - DeFi (market-driven) - Synthetic/subsidized (riskier, no ownership) The products or networks that offer sustainable yield, regulated and insured funds, and integrates into where people have their money today will win.

I'm thrilled to jump into something big: I’ve joined @Fiserv to help lead our Digital Assets team. What drew me here is simple, the opportunity to build alongside banks, credit unions and merchants to give them the financial services they need for the next era. For banks and credit unions, tokenized deposits are a defensive strategy. Upgrading a traditional checking account from a bank that closes at 5PM, to one that moves money instantly, 24/7, across the world and offering competitive yield to their depositors. Enabling the 3500 institutions already using Fiserv to keep up with the crypto exchanges and fintech companies. For merchants, stablecoins open a different door. They make global payments feel local. In the same way the internet lets any business become a storefront, stablecoins allow any business to act like a financial platform: Moving money across borders, currencies and time zones instantly. For companies already using Fiserv like @Walmart, @amazon, @Uber, @DoorDash they get real-time settlement, less friction, cheaper costs and the ability to operate globally without waiting days for funds to arrive. Our Digital Asset Platform consists of our tokenized deposit, FIUSD stablecoin and Fiserv Deposit Network products that go live in September and we’re excited to share it with customers at Fiserv Forum in Vegas on August 17th. I’m excited to learn, partner and build with many of you; alongside Sunil Sachdev, Eric M. Smith, Joe Healey, Steve Wager, Bill Battle, Eric Couillard, Cristina Anderson and many more from this organization. If you’re thinking about tokenized deposits, stablecoins and how they fit into your strategy – please reach out!