In late October, the European Commission adopted a legislative proposal requiring eurozone banks to offer instant euro payments to any individual with a bank account in an EU or EEA country at a cost no higher than that for non-instant euro credit transfers. This move was the culmination of three years of consultation and was prompted by the relatively low implementation of instant payments across the eurozone – with the commission acknowledging that around one third of EU payment service...

Despite the progress of other projects applying blockchain technology to FX, Cobalt’s CEO remains confident that his post-trade processing network can reach critical mass. Cobalt was created with the objective of eliminating multiple licence fees, ticketing charges, IT overheads and staff costs for FX market participants by creating a single, shared view of a transaction, freeing up back- and middle-office resources that currently have to reconcile across multiple systems. The venture’s...