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About

Welcome to this space where I share some of my thoughts about banking, financial services, innovation and other things that raise my interest.

My resume is available on LinkedIn. You can also follow me on twitter and I have a github avatar as well. I also enjoy corresponding with readers, so send me a note (pedro at btek dot be) and tell me what you think of the blog.


Pedro Mullor

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Transaction Banking transformation: do bankers dream of electric sheep ?

The future of banking has, as with the iPad, been dreamed out already decades ago. Science fiction writers such as Peter F Hamilton or Iain M Banks showed us a future of banking which ranges from now trivial things such as video calling with your banker, to more developed imaginations such as neural interfaces, artificial intelligences defending secure crypto-locked networks and remote will execution via time-coded cryptographically secure instruction envelopes. Also, such future is closer than you think: scientists are already experimenting with neural interfaces for lost human limbs with some degree of success [1][2], people are writing about artificial intelligences not needing to develop beyond a certain level [3] and blockchain [4] and recent internet communication events [5] are launching a new golden era of cryptography. But this is still in the ‘potentially happening’ realm space; the here and now (and how did we get here) is a little bit more tricky and challenging. ...
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How the gpi came to be

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) was founded in 1973 as a way for banks to standardise the exchange of financial transactions. Its shared data processing system and worldwide communications network form today the backbone of the financial system. In the last two decades, information technology has developed tremendously, and with it, the expectations of consumers. Social media, digital experiences and the sharing economy are re-shaping domestic markets. Disruption is there the key word: technology start-ups are being created on an ongoing basis, trying to provide simpler, fully digital experiences by disrupting the established business models, often helped by regulators which are trying to spur innovation and competition. Banks are not insensitive to this context and domestic banking, under pressure for a decade now, has seen a fundamental reshape towards self-service and digital, integrated experiences. Cross-border payments h...
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The recipe for success (in cross-border change management)

I was personally very happy to see in 2018 the development of the blockchain agenda. For example, what started as a joint venture between IBM and Maersk, seems to recently have made its pace towards a more organized approach to tackle the trade digitization agenda with Tradelens, which announced in August that they had 94 companies in its early adopters program [1] . Check out BitPesa, Trustchain… in other words, the market slowly but surely has been able to pass the techno hype phase and is considering the first real life value-add examples. Taking a step back from the last 3,5 years of #SWIFTgpi I think the same can be said about cross-border payments: for long anchored in its traditional ways, after years of both hype (blockchain), and innovative closed loop solutions (e.g. Transferwise) plus the ongoing threat from retail market innovation and GAFAs entering the banking market, the correspondent banking community came to a point where something had to be done. Here, ever...
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