Payments

BAFT Congratulates Graduates of the 2022 Future Leaders Program

WASHINGTON – BAFT, the leading global financial services association for international transaction banking, today announced the graduates of its Future Leaders Program Class of 2022. The program – now completing its seventh year – recognizes upcoming leaders in the global transaction banking industry. The Future Leader graduates were honored at an in-person ceremony in Washington, DC on May 4 as part of BAFT’s 2022 Annual Global Meeting.

Nominated by their respective institutions, the class of 2022 included 35 individuals from 22 countries across six continents representing a variety of disciplines within transaction banking. This year’s group was divided into five project teams to address current industry issues including commercializing data, CBDCs, sustainability, digitizing trade finance, and ISO 20022.

“We are incredibly proud of this year’s Future Leaders class,” said Tod Burwell, President & CEO, BAFT. “Though the pandemic prevented them from meeting in-person at the beginning of the program, this cohort showed great resilience and commitment to their teammates and respective projects. With the graduation of the 2022 class, the BAFT Future Leaders program now has more than 200 transaction banking leaders amongst its alumni.”

BAFT Congratulates the Following Graduates from the Class of 2022:

Ahmad Hamza Hashmi, International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC)
Akshat Jain, ANZ Banking Group
Alejandra Basañez Coppola, Banco Mercantil del Norte (Banorte)
Aluwani Thenga, Rand Merchant Bank
Anum Chaudhary, Bank of America
Attia Salim, ING
Ayah Al-Hneiti, The Housing Bank for Trade and Finance
Brandon Wells, Goldman Sachs
Cyril Finan, Deutsche Bank
David Willacy, StoneX Group
Dejna Zunic, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC)
Devon Falvey, Citibank
Elmi Gabobe, CAC International Bank
Farid Al-Masri, Arab Bank
Farid Samadov, Kapital Bank
Himath Kithsiri, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank
Jon Boran, Lloyds Bank
Katherine (Katie) Belchere, PNC Bank
Khaled Berto, African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank)
Kishore Kotian, Barclays Bank
Leos Hruz, BBVA
Marie Mohmand, Swedbank
Martin Cortazar Mueller, UBS
Min Jeong Chae, BMO (Bank of Montreal)
Mohit Mehtaji, HSBC Bank
Nadine Ghandour, BNP Paribas
Raphaël Scemama, Societe Generale
Ricardo Pacheco, City National Bank
Romain d’Apolito, UniCredit
Roselyn Najjuma, Standard Chartered Bank
Tomas Zaleckas, SEB
Tuomas Autero, Nordea
Valentina Polimeno, Intesa Sanpaolo
Viktoria Rudoj, Commerzbank
William Murray, Fulton Bank

About BAFT

BAFT, the leading global financial services association for international transaction banking, helps bridge solutions across financial institutions, service providers and the regulatory community that promote sound financial practices enabling innovation, efficiency, and commercial growth. BAFT engages on a wide range of topics affecting transaction banking, including trade finance, payments, and compliance.

BAFT Media Contact:
Blair Bernstein
Director, Public Relations
[email protected]
+1 (202) 663-5468

BAFT Announces New Vice President of Payments and Financial Crime

BAFT has named Deepa Sinha as its new Vice President of Payments and Financial Crime. Sinha will lead the association’s payments, cash management and financial crime-focused policy initiatives.

WASHINGTON – BAFT, the leading global financial services association for international transaction banking, has named Deepa Sinha as its new Vice President of Payments and Financial Crime. Sinha will lead the association’s payments, cash management and financial crime-focused policy initiatives, as well as support its related councils and committees.

Sinha will work to advance the goals of the payments and cash management industry through standardization, defining best practices and developing usable industry data. She will also be responsible for formulating policy recommendations and educating industry stakeholders including practitioners, regulators, policymakers and the broader business community.

“I’m excited for Deepa to join BAFT,” said Tod Burwell, President & CEO, BAFT. “Her experience in corporate treasury and consulting roles provides her with a unique perspective on critical cash management and financial crime issues that affect our members. With the rapid pace of change in this space, her experience will be quite valuable in driving issues forward.”

Prior to joining BAFT, Sinha accumulated more than 25 years of treasury and cash management experience at both corporations and banks. She formerly served as Treasurer at Caliburn International, now Acuity International, where she oversaw cash forecasting, working capital and debt management, and implemented policies and banking technology to support all core treasury functions. As the Associate Vice President of Banking Operations and Relationships at the Carlyle Group, she developed the cash management, FX and banking platforms, and built and managed the infrastructure for multicurrency cash management across 5,000+ bank accounts at more than 100 global banks. She also served on both the JPMorgan Chase Treasury and Wells Fargo Treasury Advisory Councils. Sinha is a graduate of George Mason University where she received a bachelor’s degree in government and global systems management.

BAFT Media Contact:
Blair Bernstein
Director, Public Relations
[email protected]
+1 (202) 663-5468

BAFT Introduces Economic Sanctions Resources Hub

BAFT’s Economic Sanctions Resources Hub is a collection of links and documents to various resources across numerous international jurisdictions that can help you and your organization manage economic sanctions impacting the global transaction banking industry.

BAFT is committed to providing details on economic sanctions and export controls enacted by the European Union (EU), the United Kingdom (UK), the United States (U.S.), and other international jurisdictions in response to Russia’s violations of international law and the territorial integrity of Ukraine. We are also providing details on economic sanctions and export controls enacted by the EU, Japan, the UK, and the U.S. in response to Belarus’ role in the invasion of Ukraine.

The Economic Sanctions Resources Hub features industry statements on Russian sanctions from credit card and payments processers including SWIFT, international development and trade organizations including the EBRD, the ICC, the IMF, and the World Bank Group; in addition to jurisdictional resources on Russian sanctions from Australia, Canada, the EU, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland, the UK, and the U.S.

We encourage members to actively monitor this resource hub as sanctions could change on a frequent basis, and we will endeavor to keep our community updated on changes that impact our industry.

As you review the sanctions and export controls we encourage you to send your questions and items for clarification to [email protected]. We will consolidate member questions and engage with the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on behalf of the industry.

Bobsguide: Cross-Border Interoperability will be a Key Test for CBDCs, BIS and BoE Specialists Warn

Via Bobsguide

Internationalisation of CBDC a Major Design Consideration

As the UK joins the list of global players considering issuing central bank digital currencies (CBDC), with the Bank of England taking practical steps to explore possible costs and benefits earlier this week, one crucial hurdle lies in the level of transnational utilisation they’d be able to guarantee, a Bank for International Settlements (BIS) advisor and a senior Bank of England specialist said.

One element of particular note concerns the possibility for non-residents to hold a country’s retail CBDC, said Ross Leckow, senior fintech advisor at the BIS Innovation Hub while speaking at BAFT’s annual global meeting.

“A particular design issue of importance for CBDCs is to what degree it would be internationalised, to what degree would the country issuing allow non-residents to hold it.”

Rachel Greener, senior CBDCs specialist at the BoE, added that another crucial ‘international’ design challenge of a CBDC is its potential use in cross-border payments.

“There is a lot of frictions involved in moving money across borders.”

Although the BoE has yet to make a decision on whether a sterling CBDC is necessary, interoperability with existing cross-border payments rails would be an “important topic for exploration”, Greener said.

“There are still opportunities to explore and there are still risks to understand.”

“Our view fundamentally is that payment system has to be grounded,” added Leckow. “Money is a public good, in which the public sector, particularly central banks, has to play the critical part in ensuring that it is safe, efficient, and usable.”

The remarks add to global regulators’ and central bankers’ examination of how CBDCs could be implemented and of their possible implications on financial stability – with practical questions ranging from how these new forms of money could affect the two-tier banking system to whether central banks currently have legal authority to issue them.

The BoE consultation similarly brought up the concern that CBDCs could become another internationally traded asset and could further expose domestic economies to international shocks.

According to the paper, “there may be a trade-off between the optimal provision of transaction services – that is, payments – and intermediation services – that is, credit. On the one hand, the introduction of new forms of digital money may improve the range of transaction services available to people. On the other hand, it might reduce the efficiency of credit provision in the economy.”

Stable Coins

The BoE paper also seeks further insight into private-sector stable coins – crypto currencies pegged to a fiat currency – outlining the need for these currencies to have the similar levels of trust that commercial bank money currently has. BAFT panellists agreed that stability is the key differentiator between stable coins and crypto assets (i.e. Bitcoin), which are extremely volatile and therefore represent an asset class that most regulators have discouraged investment in.

“The lack of price stability [in crypto-assets] is part of what has given rise to stable coins as a payment instrument,” said Dante Disparte, chief strategy officer at Circle.

“Part of the purpose of digitally-native payment instruments, whether it’s a CBDC or a stable coin, is to power an always-on, trusted form of payment that can live on the internet, reduce friction and reduce the type of opacity that we have with money transmission today.”

Though the US, the UK and the EU are considering regulation into stable coins, Disparts believes CBDCs and stable coins are part of a similar movement. He likens stable coins development to that of the Swift and other global payment networks.

“They have that property of being built in the line of sight of regulators and global interest, but really riding on private sector and free market innovations. The same holds true today with blockchain-based payment systems.

“A trusted digital currency, whether it’s privately issued or issued directly from a central bank, is only as good as the institutions [and] policies […] that guard it.”

BAFT Releases Whitepaper on Cross-Border Faster Payments

BAFT announces publication of whitepaper on conditions necessary for a cross-border faster payments ecosystem.

WASHINGTON – BAFT, the leading global financial services association for international transaction banking, today announced the publication of its whitepaper, Enabling Faster Payments Across Borders.

The paper discusses the cost-benefit analysis involved in moving forward with cross-border faster payments including user expectations and industry readiness for adoption. It also provides recommendations and key considerations to enable the development of a cross-border faster payments ecosystem.

“Baseline standards and processes must be established to address the open issues that make real progress on cross-border faster payments difficult to attain,” said Samantha Pelosi, senior vice president for payments and innovation, BAFT and co-chair of the BAFT Cross-Border Faster Payments Working Group, which produced the paper. “These issues fall into three broad categories of interoperability, business processes and compliance, and are similar to the frictions that the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) have identified as inherent to all cross-border payments.”

The publication of this paper is the first step of BAFT’s larger strategy to facilitate global faster payments by encouraging the designers of national and regional faster payments systems to include the capability at the outset. The paper and ongoing research by BAFT’s Global Payments Industry Council on best practices for the implementation of a faster payments system will serve as reference points for the association’s discussions with regulators, central banks, market infrastructures and system operators.

“To benefit international trade and economic growth, we need to enhance global connectivity by making payment systems in different geographies interoperable,” said Vinayak Prabhu, vice president, global transaction banking, Mashreq Bank and co-chair of the Working Group. “The paper provides recommendations along with potential models for building a seamless, transparent, and faster cross-border payments ecosystem.”

BAFT encourages entities that are currently building or upgrading their faster payments systems to incorporate the functionality and operating rules necessary for processing cross-border payments when the market is ready.

The development of the whitepaper began in the fall of 2019, when BAFT assembled a working group of 24 members based in North America, Europe, MENA, and APAC. A drafting sub-group of BNY Mellon, HSBC, iSoftware4Banks, Mashreq Bank and TD Bank wove the information into an important, future-looking resource.

To read Enabling Faster Payments Across Borders, visit BAFT’s Library of Documents under the BAFT Guidance on Industry Practices section or click here.

About BAFT
BAFT is the leading international financial services association whose membership includes large global and regional banks, service providers, and fintech companies headquartered around the world. BAFT provides advocacy, thought leadership, education, and a global forum for its members in transaction banking, including international trade finance and payments. For nearly a century, BAFT has expanded markets, shaped policy, developed business solutions, and preserved the safety and soundness of the global financial system.

BAFT Media Contact:
Blair Bernstein
[email protected]
+ 1 (202) 663-5468

BAFT Releases Best Practices for New Financial Asset on Distributed Ledger Technology

BAFT announces the publication of both the Business Best Practices and Technical Best Practices, Version 1.1, for the Distributed Ledger Payment Commitment (DLPC).

WASHINGTON – BAFT, the leading global financial services association for international transaction banking, today announced the publication of both the Business Best Practices and Technical Best Practices, Version 1.1, for the Distributed Ledger Payment Commitment (DLPC). The DLPC is a digital asset and global standard for a payment commitment that can be used on any blockchain network and can operate across networks. First released in August 2020, this latest version of the DLPC Best Practices incorporates industry comments and experience from implementation in live transactions.

Investigating the use of distributed ledger technology to expedite the digitization of trade finance, the BAFT Innovation Council established the DLPC working group in 2016. It was tasked with producing standardized rules for the transformation of a payment commitment, the common core of all negotiable trade instruments, into a digital asset to be used in any trade finance solution sitting on any distributed ledger technology platform. The working group introduced the DLPC Best Practices for trial use in April 2019.

Since then, the DLPC has been implemented in live transactions as a digital asset backed by a traditional trade instrument, such as a guarantee, as a means for enterprises to finance international trade transactions and facilitate the ultimate resulting payments. With the recent guidance from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency endorsing bank participation on blockchains and use of stablecoins for payments, the DLPC is in position to make a significant contribution to the new rails of transaction banking.

“In just a little over a year, the DLPC has grown from being a global standard for traditional payment commitments to a new financial asset and payment instrument in its own right,” said Rebecca Liao, co-founder and COO of Skuchain and co-chair of the DLPC working group. “The trade finance community was hungry for an innovation with a solid legal framework that would allow transactions to be digitized, de-risked, negotiable, and interoperable across platforms to promote greater liquidity and market efficiency.”

“The DLPC breaks new ground for financial services firms seeking to leverage the unique characteristics of distributed ledger technology,” said Samantha Pelosi, senior vice president for payments and innovation, BAFT. “Use of the DLPC facilitates the interoperability of disparate blockchain platforms and creates what is currently the only digital negotiable instrument with legal backing. These best practices provide for sound validity under Delaware law, and BAFT continues to advocate for the amendment of laws to grant similar legal status to digital negotiable instruments used in cross-border transactions.”

The DLPC working group consists of 12 representatives from BAFT and the following organizations: Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer, CGI, Citi, GTBInsights LLC, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, Queen Mary University of London, R3, Red Chalk Group, Skuchain, Standard Chartered, Surecomp, US Bank, Wells Fargo, and Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor.

To read the DLPC Best Practices, visit our Library of Documents under the Industry Definitions and Guidelines section.

BAFT Media Contact:
Blair Bernstein
[email protected]
+ 1 (202) 663-5468

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