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Rep. Steven Horsford pitches PARITY Act as ‘durable floor’ for crypto tax at Consensus Miami

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Rep. Steven Horsford pitches PARITY Act as ‘durable floor’ for crypto tax at Consensus Miami

Congressman Steven Horsford told CoinDesk’s Consensus Miami conference Tuesday that his bipartisan PARITY Act is an incremental path forward in a Congress where Senate market-structure negotiations have stalled.

“PARITY is designed to set a durable floor, not to be the last word,” he said, noting that existing problems need to be resolved “clearly within the tax code’s jurisdiction in order to have the protection for the consumer, small businesses, and those who are owners of these assets to define whether it gets treated as income or capital gains.”

The Nevada Democrat co-authored the PARITY Act discussion draft with Republican Representative Max Miller of Ohio in December, and revised it on March 26. He told moderator Yesha Yadav that he prefers a narrow approach over comprehensive alternatives, including Sen. Cynthia Lummis’s proposal. The risk of a comprehensive bill, Horsford said, is that “it pairs genuinely helpful provisions with definitional language that is so broad that it creates other problems.”

PARITY’s headline provisions include a stablecoin-payments cost-basis test, a five-year tax-deferral election on staking and mining rewards and an extension of wash-sale rules to digital assets. Horsford said that while retirement account access is absent in present drafts, he considers it “something that I personally want to see, because in order to close the wealth gap, we have to be able to help people plan for their retirement. Digital assets are a way to do that. I know that there is genuine bipartisan appetite for us to work on this, but rushing it and just putting language in a bill without getting it right creates these unintended consequences.”

On the broader policy climate, Horsford said that Senate negotiations to advance the CLARITY Act between Senators Thom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks seem to be “on hold.” When asked whether bipartisan crypto legislation could pass before the November midterms, he declined to commit to a timeline.

“It’s less about a timeline and more about getting it right,” he said. “You can rush and pass a bill in Congress that has unintended consequences that you won’t be able to fix later.”

Forter on Preparing Merchants to Safely Engage with Agentic Commerce

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Forter on Preparing Merchants to Safely Engage with Agentic Commerce

At MPE 2026, Adam Davies, Director of AI at Forter, dives into how they are redefining fraud prevention and payment processing, turning what used to be a business drag into a driver for growth. Davies explains that when Forter launched 13 years ago, the main goal was to modernize fraud management by replacing outdated, static rules with automated, scalable technology.

Forter notes that those old systems often failed by declining valuable, trustworthy customers or, conversely, letting fraudulent ones through.

Davies highlights that Forter has expanded its focus significantly beyond just fraud management to include payment optimization. Today, Forter’s mission is to help merchants grow by transforming their fraud and payment systems from being a simple cost center into a powerful revenue optimization engine. According to Davies, while most industry players focus on minimizing chargebacks from fraudulent transactions, many overlook the substantial revenue loss caused by falsely declining good customers. 

Forter addresses this by accurately assessing the trustworthiness of every transaction, ensuring legitimate customers enjoy a frictionless, excellent buying experience that drives up merchant conversion rates. On the payment side, Davies details how Forter uses intelligent decision-making, for instance, choosing the right payment rail, network, or PSP, to boost approval rates and simultaneously reduce processing costs.

Looking ahead, Davies identifies agentic commerce as the major trend with real substance behind the buzzword and this new channel introduces complex security and engineering challenges. Davies emphasizes that Forter is heavily investing in solutions to equip merchants with the technology required to engage with this channel safely. By embedding their core capabilities around identity, trust, and payment optimization into this new infrastructure, Forter ensures that transactions originating from AI agents are secure while maintaining high conversion levels.

Finally, Davies speaks positively about the value of attending MPE and describes the event as a crucial meeting place where partners, vendors, and merchants connect to have real conversations. The primary benefit, Davies concludes, is the efficient networking opportunity, getting all the experts in one room to discuss merchant pain points, find synergies for future solutions, and explore new opportunities for partnership and client engagement. 

Kraken Partners With MoneyGram To Enable Crypto Cash-Outs At 500,000 Locations Worldwide

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Kraken Partners With MoneyGram To Enable Crypto Cash-Outs At 500,000 Locations Worldwide

Kraken will allow customers to convert cryptocurrency into cash at MoneyGram locations across more than 100 countries, addressing a longstanding gap in the digital asset ecosystem, according to an exclusive report from Fortune.

The partnership gives Kraken users access to nearly 500,000 physical locations worldwide, where they can exchange crypto holdings for local currency. The move targets a key friction point in crypto markets: while digital transfers settle with speed, converting assets into cash often involves multiple steps, limited banking access, or delays.

The initiative reflects rising demand for reliable cash access, driven in part by Kraken’s expanding presence in regions with unstable currencies. 

Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi told Fortune that demand for reliable cash access has grown alongside the exchange’s international user base, especially in regions with unstable currencies. In those markets, users often treat crypto platforms as alternatives to banks.

“They want to store in USD or USD equivalent,” Sethi said. “They want to get yield. They want to do payments. They want to move money back and forth.”

That usage pattern creates a need for dependable off-ramps into cash. Through the MoneyGram network, Kraken users can bridge digital balances with local currency pickup, paying a variable exchange fee tied to each transaction.

The deal also marks a strategic shift for MoneyGram, a legacy payments company that has worked to modernize its operations after losing ground to fintech firms and digital banks. The company has focused on integrating digital assets into its infrastructure as part of a broader effort to reposition its business.

MoneyGram is dabbling with crypto

MoneyGram has spent recent years building crypto infrastructure, including a noncustodial wallet and deeper integration of stablecoins into its payment flows. The company has positioned stablecoins as a backbone for cross-border transfers, aiming to reduce costs and settlement delays tied to traditional rails. A private equity acquisition in 2023 gave the firm room to pursue that transformation outside public markets.

For Kraken, the deal adds to a period of expansion as it prepares for a potential public listing. The exchange has broadened its product suite beyond spot crypto trading, acquiring futures platform NinjaTrader and derivatives venue Bitnomial. Those moves reflect a strategy to compete across asset classes while strengthening its appeal to both institutional and retail users.

Despite its institutional focus, Kraken’s growth in emerging markets has shaped product priorities. Access to cash remains critical in economies where banking infrastructure lacks reach or trust.

The tie-up with MoneyGram signals a convergence between crypto platforms and traditional financial networks, where physical locations still play a key role. It also highlights how adoption depends not only on digital innovation, but on practical access to money in everyday form.

Kraken has not disclosed a full timeline for global rollout or its IPO plans, though it filed draft registration documents in late 2025.

Drift Sets Out Token-Based Recovery Framework for $295M April Exploit

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Drift Sets Out Token-Based Recovery Framework for $295M April Exploit

The Solana-based perpetuals exchange will issue burn-on-redeem recovery tokens funded by exchange revenue, a $127.5M Tether commitment, and another $20M from partners.

Drift Protocol on Tuesday published its user recovery plan for the April 1 exploit, laying out a token-based framework backed by exchange revenue, a Tether-led capital commitment, and partner contributions, with the Solana perpetuals exchange targeting a Q2 2026 relaunch.

The blueprint follows the drain of Drift’s vaults that forensic firm Mandiant has now confirmed was the work of a DPRK-affiliated threat actor. Drift puts total user losses at $295.4 million.

Recovery Token Mechanics

Every affected wallet will receive transferable SPL tokens, separate from the DRIFT governance token, with each unit representing $1 of verified loss. The recovery pool will be seeded with the protocol’s roughly $3.8 million in remaining assets, converted to USDT, and then topped up through three streams: a quarterly cut of exchange revenue, up to $127.5 million from Tether’s earlier commitment, and up to $20 million from strategic partners.

Redemption opens once the pool exceeds $5 million, with the price set by total fund value divided by outstanding supply. Redemptions are burn-on-redeem and one-time only, meaning users who cash out before the pool reaches the full $295.4M forfeit any further claim. Unclaimed tokens at the end of the claim window are burned, lifting the redemption value for remaining holders.

User balances were snapshotted at 18:31:47 UTC on April 1, with oracle prices taken from 16:06:00 UTC, before the attack distorted markets. The roughly $20 million insurance fund, which was untouched, will be subject to a separate DAO vote on whether it pays out to depositors or rolls into the recovery pool.

Funds Status and Bounty

Roughly 130,259 ETH, worth around $293 million, remains concentrated in four attacker-controlled wallets that have been flagged across exchanges. Two Wormhole transfers covering 59.37 WBTC and 557.90 WETH have been delayed by the bridge’s Governor until late July, while 3.36M USDC has been frozen on Circle’s CCTP, a process the issuer was previously sued over for not acting faster on the day of the exploit. Drift, working with ZeroShadow and Mandiant, has also offered a 10% whitehat bounty in collaboration with Bybit.

Planned Relaunch

When Drift comes back online, it will be a leaner, perps-only venue settled in USDT rather than USDC. The protocol is removing the durable-nonce attack surface central to the April 1 breach, deploying a fresh program with rotated keys, and shutting down ancillary products, including Isolated Markets and Amplify. Mainnet deployment will require instruction-level audits, time-locked admin actions, and review under Solana’s STRIDE program.

This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.

Making Withholding Tax Recovery an Automated Reality

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Making Withholding Tax Recovery an Automated Reality

Ryan Ludden from Sprintax highlights the massive, untapped opportunity in cross-border tax recovery, proving his point right away by letting the data do the talking. He points out that research by Deloitte and McKinsey that suggested $15 billion in reclaimable cross-border withholding tax was left untouched in 2025, money that’s essentially sitting with tax authorities waiting for investors and global employee shareholders to claim it. The core problem is that claiming this money back is difficult as a study by the EU Commission showed that 70% of retail investors who had reclaimable tax left unclaimed. Why? Ludden summarizes the issue as the “four C’s”, the process is clunky, complex, confusing, and costly as the process is often a paper-based, manual and requires specific in-house knowledge, leading many to simply cut their losses.

Ludden then explains how Sprintax Dividends is changing this narrative by making withholding tax relief and reclaim accessible through a digital platform and shares a powerful real-life case study involving a well-known Swiss multinational that has a global base of employee shareholders. These investors were subject to a high 35% dividend withholding tax in Switzerland, and many didn’t even realize this amount was being deducted from their paycheck. To solve this, Sprintax first focused on awareness and launched a campaign complete with webinars, whitepapers, and videos. Once educated, investors were moved to Sprintax’s platform, which simplified the entire process. The technology guides the user to confirm their tax residency, calculates their eligibility in real-time, and uses OCR and AI to read digitally uploaded supporting documents.

This automation eliminates the need for the investor to manually complete complicated tax forms as Sprintax even handles the submission, sometimes using digitally signed power of attorneys to file the reclaim on the client’s behalf. A huge advantage is the use of a global payment provider, TransferMate, which allows them to bypass cross-border banking fees, ensuring the refund goes directly into the investor’s bank account quickly, whether they are in Ireland, the US, or elsewhere globally. For the multinational client, this solution unlocked significant value, providing real-time reporting that showed, country by country, exactly how much dividend withholding tax was flowing back into the pockets of their employee shareholders. This value is set to rise exponentially as more employees adopt the technology.

Ultimately, Ludden sees Sprintax’s mission for the next three to five years as becoming the industry standard for cross-border withholding tax recovery and relief. The goal isn’t just to simplify reclaims but to support the entire tax ecosystem as it undergoes digital transformation, helping organizations stay agile amid constantly changing tax rules. Most importantly, Sprintax wants to see a fundamental shift: supporting investors to get taxed at the correct rate up front, making the tedious reclaim process the rare exception rather than the disappointing norm.

Crypto’s value is from being outside regulatory apparatus, says Arthur Hayes

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Crypto’s value is from being outside regulatory apparatus, says Arthur Hayes

Miami, FL — Crypto doesn’t need regulation – something that charting the price of bitcoin over successive U.S. governments clearly shows, according to the provocative co-founder of BitMEX and CIO of Maelstrom, Arthur Hayes.

Hayes’ thesis is simple: fiat liquidity – precisely, the printing of more units of fiat money – is the only thing that affects bitcoin’s value proposition.

“If you want to talk about the price of Bitcoin and what’s the fair value, or what’s the future price, all that matters is how many units of fiat are there today,” Hayes told the audience at Consensus Miami 2026. “How many units of fiat will there be in the future, and what’s the pace of this fiat creation?”

While there’s a lot of talk about tradfi and regulators and crypto coming together and having this “bastard child,” the majority of people who attend conferences like Consensus want only to see the number go up, Hayes said. But they forget what has made the price of Bitcoin go from from zero to however many trillions of dollars that it’s worth today, he added, hammering his thesis home:

”The more money that is printed in the U.S. and around the world, the more value that bitcoin will have in fiat currencies,” said Hayes. “And it’s this liquidity part of the equation that really drives the price of bitcoin, and not anything to do with politics.”

Few executives in crypto maintain a social presence as lively, chaotic and strangely insightful as Hayes’. Behind the lapel-grabbing theatrics lies a track record that traders pay attention to. For instance, Hayes was early to the rise of several AI-adjacent tokens, a sector that dominated speculative flows throughout 2024 and 2025. He also championed Zcash (ZEC), which rallied more than 450% over the past year.

Looking back over the last few U.S. administrations, key factors can be picked out that greatly bolstered the value of bitcoin, Hayes said. This started with the bailing out of banks during the banking crisis and printing a lot more money, which sent bitcoin “off to the races.”

More recently, events like COVID, stimulus checks, Biden’s New Green Deal, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have driven up the value of bearer assets like bitcoin and gold.

“This is the value that bitcoin provides outside of the regulatory apparatus,” Hayes said. “It’s precisely the reason that it does not adhere to the regulatory regime that some of you wish to put it under with bills like the Clarity Act and other things.”

Sumsub and Chainlink Bring Privacy-Preserving KYC to Major Blockchains

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Sumsub and Chainlink Bring Privacy-Preserving KYC to Major Blockchains

Sumsub and Chainlink are moving identity checks deeper into blockchain infrastructure. The initiative aims to make regulated digital-asset products easier to access without repeatedly exposing users’ personal data.

The companies said Tuesday that Sumsub’s verification system will be integrated with Chainlink’s Automated Compliance Engine, or ACE, to support privacy-preserving identity credentials across Ethereum, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Polygon and Base.

The arrangement gives users a way to complete know-your-customer checks once and reuse verified claims across multiple wallets.

That could reduce a persistent friction point in crypto: every exchange, wallet, issuer or protocol often runs its own onboarding process, even when the same user has already been verified elsewhere.

Under the first phase, a user completes Sumsub’s KYC flow and proves control of a wallet by signing a message. Chainlink ACE then issues a Cross-Chain Identity credential, or CCID, that can contain verified claims such as “Age > 18” without putting raw personal information onchain.

The system is designed to let protocols and asset issuers confirm eligibility without seeing passports, IDs or other underlying documents.

“Digital asset markets need identity verification that can extend into compliant on-chain workflows without forcing users through repeated onboarding,” said Ilya Brovin, chief growth officer at Sumsub. “Through Chainlink ACE, Sumsub can extend its identity verification services into compliant institutional digital asset markets and help enable access to permissioned assets with less friction.”

Chainlink ACE is a compliance layer that connects asset issuers, identity providers, risk-scoring platforms and distribution channels into a managed stack, allowing policies to be configured once and enforced across chains. Its framework includes identity verification, policy enforcement, monitoring and reporting tools for compliance-focused digital assets.

The launch comes as tokenization is moving from pilot projects toward regulated market infrastructure.

Nasdaq has proposed allowing tokenized securities to trade on its main market, while Reuters reported that the exchange wants tokenized instruments to carry the same material rights as traditional securities before they are treated equivalently.

That context matters.

Tokenized funds, equities, bonds and real-world assets cannot scale like permissionless meme coins. Issuers need to know whether a wallet belongs to an eligible investor, whether the user is in a permitted jurisdiction and whether transactions comply with sanctions and anti-money-laundering rules.

The challenge is doing that without turning public blockchains into public databases of personal information.

According to Chainlink’s technical documentation, ACE’s Cross-Chain Identity component links onchain identities through CCIDs to offchain credentials such as KYC/AML status, accredited-investor status or fund-subscriber status. It also supports policy enforcement, allowing smart contracts to restrict access based on allowlists, denylists and jurisdictional rules.

It promises simpler onboarding for end-users. The larger incentive for institutions is programmable compliance across fragmented blockchain networks.

That is why the initial support list is notable. Ethereum remains the largest smart-contract settlement layer. Arbitrum, Polygon and Base are major Ethereum scaling networks. Avalanche has also positioned itself around institutional and financial-market use cases.

The partnership is not the first attempt to solve reusable identity in crypto.

Circle introduced Verite in 2022 as an open-source framework for decentralized identity. It was designed to let users hold portable credentials in a crypto wallet and prove claims such as KYC status or accredited-investor eligibility without disclosing personal data to every application.

Polygon ID, later developed under Privado ID, also pushed self-sovereign identity and verifiable credentials as a way to prove user attributes without repeatedly sharing documents. World ID has focused on proof-of-personhood, while Coinbase, Circle and other firms have explored credentials for compliant DeFi access.

The results have been mixed.

Reusable identity has become a widely accepted design goal, but adoption has remained fragmented. Many systems operate inside specific ecosystems, rely on separate credential formats or lack a common compliance layer that issuers, wallets and protocols can use across chains.

That is the gap Sumsub and Chainlink are trying to address.

Chainlink already has a broad role in crypto infrastructure through oracles, data feeds and cross-chain services. Sumsub brings a conventional compliance business that serves fintech, crypto, trading and online platforms.

Together, the companies are trying to bridge two markets that often move at different speeds: regulated finance and public blockchain infrastructure.

“We’re excited to see Sumsub support Chainlink’s Automated Compliance Engine to advance privacy-preserving identity and compliance infrastructure, enabling the Cross-Chain Identity framework for our clients,” Ishan Vishnoi, VP of BCM Product & Business Ops at Chainlink Labs, said in a statement shared with AlexaBlockchain.

“This is the kind of scalable, privacy-preserving compliance infrastructure needed to unlock tokenized assets at institutional scale,” he added.

The initiative also reflects a broader regulatory shift.

Global securities watchdog IOSCO said tokenization could reshape how assets are issued, traded and serviced, but warned that adoption remains limited and that blockchain-based assets can introduce new risks, including uncertainty over investor rights and counterparty exposure.

hat warning is relevant to identity infrastructure.

Without reliable identity, tokenized assets may remain limited to closed pilots, private ledgers or highly controlled platforms. With reusable compliance credentials, issuers could theoretically distribute regulated assets across multiple public and private blockchains while still enforcing investor eligibility.

The near-term impact will likely be modest.

Phase 1 is aimed at retail users participating in ACE launch campaigns. The bigger test is Phase 2, scheduled for summer 2026, when the model is expected to shift toward asset issuers as end users.

Future phases may allow users to authorize third-party access to underlying data through APIs, according to the announcement.

That could make the system more useful for institutions that need deeper checks than a simple age or jurisdiction claim. It could also raise new governance questions around consent, data access, revocation and liability if credentials become widely used across financial applications.

The announcement signals that onchain identity is becoming part of the same infrastructure race as custody, settlement, oracles and tokenization.

The market no longer needs only faster blockchains. It needs systems that let regulated assets move across them without forcing users to surrender privacy at every checkpoint.

The article “Sumsub and Chainlink Bring Privacy-Preserving KYC to Major Blockchains” was first published on AlexaBlockchain. Read the complete article here: https://alexablockchain.com/sumsub-and-chainlink-bring-privacy-preserving-kyc-to-major-blockchains/

Read Also: MoneyGram, Pairpoint and eToro Back Midnight’s Privacy Blockchain Before Mainnet

Disclaimer: The information provided on AlexaBlockchain is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Read complete disclaimer here.

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Sequans Sells 1,025 Bitcoin As Revenue Falls, Losses Mount

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Sequans Sells 1,025 Bitcoin As Revenue Falls, Losses Mount

Paris-based Sequans Communications sold 1,025 bitcoin during the first quarter of 2026, cutting its digital asset reserves nearly in half as the IoT semiconductor maker grappled with declining revenue and mounting losses tied to a treasury strategy that has turned from ambitious to burdensome.

The sale reduced Sequans’ bitcoin position from 2,139 BTC at year-end 2025 to 1,114 BTC by April 30, marking the second major disposal in six months for a company that less than a year ago proclaimed plans to accumulate 3,000 bitcoin as a “long-term store of value”.

The financial pressure is evident in the numbers. Sequans reported revenue of $6.1 million for the quarter ended March 31, down 24.8% from $8.1 million a year earlier. The year-over-year comparison reveals the company’s vulnerability: the prior-year period included significant license and services revenue from Qualcomm that did not recur, exposing the underlying weakness in product sales.

While product sales did increase 45% from the year-ago quarter, gross margin compressed to 37.7% from 64.5% as lower-margin hardware displaced the lucrative licensing income. For a company burning cash, the shift in revenue mix compounds the challenge.

Sequans’ Bitcoin strategy became a burden

The bitcoin holdings that CEO Georges Karam once framed as a balance-sheet asset have become a source of substantial losses. Operating losses reached $50.5 million in the quarter, driven by $29.3 million in unrealized impairment charges on bitcoin holdings and $11.7 million in realized losses from selling the digital assets.

The company used bitcoin sale proceeds to redeem convertible debt and fund an American Depositary Share buyback program, a pragmatic move to reduce liabilities but one that underscores how the treasury strategy has shifted from accumulation to liquidation.

The remaining bitcoin holdings are largely encumbered. Of the 1,114 BTC held as of April 30, 817 bitcoin — representing 73% of current holdings valued at $62.3 million — remained pledged as collateral for $35.9 million in outstanding convertible notes. The pledged bitcoin exceeds the debt value, reflecting the over-collateralization required by lenders wary of cryptocurrency volatility.

The remaining debt is scheduled for redemption by June 1, 2026, after which all bitcoin will be unrestricted and available for sale. Whether Sequans will retain those assets or continue liquidating to fund operations remains an open question.

Net loss totaled $54.3 million, or $3.73 per diluted ADS, compared to $7.3 million, or $0.29 per ADS, in the prior-year quarter. Even on a non-IFRS basis—which excludes impairment charges, stock-based compensation, and accounting adjustments related to convertible debt—the net loss was substantial at $20.7 million, or $1.42 per ADS.

CEO Georges Karam framed the bitcoin sales as “decisive steps to simplify and strengthen our balance sheet,” while highlighting momentum in the company’s core IoT semiconductor business. 

He cited a growing backlog, maturing design wins, and customer interest in Cat-M, Cat-1bis, and 5G eRedCap connectivity solutions, as well as new RF transceivers for drones and defense applications.

Sequans shares have fallen 51.5% over the past six months to $3.01, reflecting investor skepticism about both the bitcoin strategy and the core business trajectory. 

The company ranks 40th among publicly traded firms holding bitcoin, far behind Strategy’s 818,334 BTC and Twenty One Capital’s 43,514 BTC.

Wall Street warns human-built markets can’t keep up with machine-speed trading

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Wall Street warns human-built markets can’t keep up with machine-speed trading

Miami Beach, FL — A growing group of Wall Street and crypto executives say the financial system is heading toward a breaking point, as markets shift from human-paced processes to machine-driven activity that runs around the clock.

“We’re moving to a world where transactions happen at a speed no human can track,” Sandy Kaul, head of digital assets and innovation at Franklin Templeton, said during a panel on the future of capital markets at Consensus in Miami on Tuesday. At the same time, “almost every process in capital markets today was built for humans, and none of them will stand up to what’s coming,” she added.

The tension between those two ideas — faster, automated markets and legacy systems designed for manual oversight — sat at the center of the conversation.

For decades, financial markets have relied on layered processes to handle trades. Systems batch transactions, reconcile records and settle trades hours or even days later. That structure dates back to a time when physical stock certificates moved across Wall Street by hand.

Now, blockchain infrastructure is starting to remove those constraints. Panelists pointed to tokenization — the process of turning assets like stocks or money market funds into digital tokens — as a key shift. These tokens can move instantly, settle in seconds and operate continuously.

“We are unwinding a system that’s been in place for 50 years and going back to settling one transaction at a time,” Kaul said, describing how real-time settlement could replace today’s batch-based model.

That shift has practical implications. In a tokenized system, an investor’s cash could remain fully invested until the exact moment it is spent. “Every penny of my earnings is fully invested from the moment I earn it to the moment that I spend it,” Christine Moy, partner at Apollo, said, outlining a future where idle cash largely disappears.

The same logic applies to large corporations. Instead of holding cash across multiple accounts worldwide, companies could pool funds into yield-generating assets and convert them only when payments are due.

Still, major hurdles remain. While blockchain networks can already process transactions quickly, some panelists argued that the industry lacks the rules and standards needed for institutions to operate at scale.

“We’ve solved the transaction problem. What’s missing is a standard for governance,” said Tom Zschach, former chief innovation officer at Swift, pointing to the need for clear rules around ownership, compliance and permissions.

That gap matters for large financial firms, where reliability often outweighs speed. “If there’s a chance it might not work, it’s a non-starter. What institutions need is certainty,” he said.

At the same time, competitive pressure is rising. As newer platforms offer faster and more flexible financial services, traditional firms risk losing clients if they fail to adapt.

Taken together, the discussion suggests the next phase of market evolution will not just be about faster trades. It will center on rebuilding the underlying systems so they can support continuous, automated flows of capital—without breaking the trust that global finance depends on.

Weaving AI into the Fabric of Your Financial Organization

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Weaving AI into the Fabric of Your Financial Organization

Kieran Ivers from Brightbeam discusses the practical realities of integrating AI into financial organizations, emphasizing that successful change management starts small and addresses human concerns directly. Ivers acknowledges that organizational change can be scary, especially when employees have accumulated years of  knowledge and Brightbeam’s approach is to avoid proposing a lengthy, multi-year process. Instead, they focus first on eliminating the cognitively taxing, high-volume tasks like data transfer and copy-and-paste that are prone to human error. By using AI to solve this immediate, tedious work, Ivers explains that teams are quickly freed up for higher-value tasks, creating early wins and encouraging immediate buy-in from both staff and leadership.

Ivers describes the ideal AI implementation as a flywheel strategy. Rather than aiming for one large solution, Brightbeam breaks the adoption process into quick, value-adding use cases that can be developed in as little as 12 weeks. Each successful case builds momentum, accelerating the acceptance of AI as an everyday operational tool and the core message here is that AI cannot be a temporary bolt-on but must be intrinsically woven into an organization’s overall strategy to be successful.

Brightbeam also tackles critical concerns surrounding data governance, privacy, and data sovereignty, a major and ongoing concern for large organizations dealing with regulations like GDPR. When using cloud-hosted AI solutions, the risk extends beyond just the data itself to include the organization’s processes, standard operating procedures, and the output of the AI. This is particularly relevant when governmental policies in certain jurisdictions may allow for access to these systems. To mitigate this, Brightbeam is actively working with firms, especially those in the regulated banking and insurance space, to explore options.  This ensures models can be run in-house, keeping data safe and secure and close to where the action happens, without compromising the value that AI adds.

Looking ahead five years, Brightbeam stresses that AI integration is not just a competitive advantage but an operational must for financial organizations and future success will be measured by how AI assisting humans in making the right decisions faster. A key indicator of true success for Brightbeam is when their clients no longer rely on them to maintain and operate their AI systems.

Ivers points out that companies can now up skill their current staff to manage these models at a much lower cost. AI offers immense value now, but organizations must move fast to weave it into their fabric, or risk being disrupted and left behind, much like what happened to market giants in past technology shifts.

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