M. Asim Soysal

Another German bank in the news. Volksbank Duesseldorf Neuss, a member of Germany’s cooperative banking sector, plays a key role in a €100 million fraud suffered by a French retailer, and committed by a consultant to the retailer, as court documents claim. Some important takeaways for others as the bank missed several red flags: 1)     The French fashion retailer set up a banking account at Volksbank in May 2023. In June 2023, the account received a deposit of €100 million from Société Générale. Less than a week later the bank received and executed an order to transfer the deposit to a Turkish bank. The quick succession of events – account set-up, deposit, transfer out – is a prototypical pattern of financial fraud, usually for money laundry purposes. 2)     The order to transfer-out the funds arrived from an e-mail address which had not been registered or used at the bank before – another important signal of potential fraud. 3)     At the time of the transfer, Turkey was a high-risk country for financial fraud purposes under FATF. Court proceedings are ongoing against the consultant and the shell companies she used, but the court documents reveal important gaps in compliance procedures at the bank.

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Game changing AML draft guidelines in Germany! The Ministry of Finance's draft regulation specifically governs the utilization of video identification procedures (VI) as an identification method for AML purposes. It stipulates that VI methods must accompany eID offerings! Furthermore, it allows for the potential use of (partially) automated procedures and includes an experimentation clause for fully automated procedures.

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With tokenized money, the possibilities are limitless. 🌐 One exciting example? M2M Offline Payments, where machines can transact seamlessly without internet connectivity. But that's just the beginning. What innovative solutions do you envision in this space? Let’s collaborate and shape the future of payments together. Share your ideas with us.

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#Bitcoin is coming. 🧡 Another big move for customers and the shops. „Lightning“ ⚡️- fast payment with cheap fees and no charge-back risk. Satisfied customers and Bitcoin adoption increasing 🌱🧡🚀 OPAGO PAY takes out cost and complexity of adopting Bitcoin and has the payment devices, terminals and the platform for small, medium and enterprise companies, to easily integrate in any kind of business, whether a shop, online marketplace or industrial use cases!

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An interesting FAZ article (in German only) with background infos on Siemens' €300M digital bond issuance on the SWIAT Blockchain. Written by Viktor Banh (DekaBank), Alexander Bechtel (DWS), and Manuel Klein (Deutsche Bank). 🔎 Transaction Overview: 🔹 Volume: 300 Mio. EUR 🔹 Issuer: Siemens 🔹 Registrar: DekaBank Deutsche Girozentrale 🔹 Investors: DZ BANK AG, Bayerische Landesbank, LBBW, Helaba, DekaBank 🔹 Payment Service Provider for Siemens: Deutsche Bank 🔹 Technology Provider: SWIAT (regulatory-compliant Blockchain, Tokenization and Settlement Solution, and Integration with Bundesbank Trigger Chain) We are steadily progressing toward more natural transaction flows in the crypto securities space. Moreover, with Eurosystem Exploratory Toolbox enabling the payment leg with central bank money, the puzzle of a DLT-based financial market infrastructure is coming together piece by piece. Full steam ahead! 😉

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"Code is Law? How our legal system must adapt to smart contracts and legal tech" was the topic of the 4th Blockchain Roundtable in the Bundestag with Federal Minister of Justice Dr. Marco Buschmann and Frank Schäffler. An exciting topic! IMHO: Smart contracts are just plain old computer code. The only difference from the current status quo of computer code is that the integrity of the "execution machine" on which this computer code runs is ensured by a blockchain/DLT network instead of a trusted third party. That's all! This means that the only responsibility that shifts here is ensuring the integrity of the "execution machine." The remaining responsibilities largely stay the same: software developers/maintainers, software deployers, software operators, etc. Moreover, there is no guarantee for error-free code, and the code is subject to change because the requirements for the code change. Additionally, every change represents a new potential for errors. Finally, I do not believe that legal agreements and laws can be completely encoded in computer code, and smart contracts face the same limitations. I assume, this is because agreements and laws are not entirely deterministic in the sense of a computer algorithm; they also contain elements that describe intent and allow for interpretation. Any PhD theses on this topic? cc Anjuli von Huelst, Johannes von Selle

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