Starting from an exporter that needs to convert a US dollar payment, this article explains the tiered structure of the FX market and the difference between OTC and exchange trading. It walks through the processes and uses of spot, forwards, FX swaps, cross-currency swaps and options, shows what drives exchange rates over the long run and how prices are quoted minute by minute, and uses China's interbank FX market and bank-to-customer market to explain the trading, clearing and settlement chain, the division of regulatory roles, and how FX trading relates to cross-border payments.
A close reading of BIS Papers No 175. Starting from a single payment, it explains the hierarchy of money, par and backstops, why gold and bitcoin stand outside the monetary system, and what stablecoins still lack.
Starting from Indonesia's QRIS cross-border progress, this article separates four layers of QR payments: symbol encoding, EMVCo data structures, national QR schemes and cross-border links. It compares major QR standards and China's Cross-Border QR Code Unified Gateway, and traces the information flow, FX conversion and settlement behind a cross-border QR payment.
EnsembleTX brings tokenised deposits into real-value trading, with interbank settlement on HKD RTGS for now and 24/7 tokenised central bank money planned. The article unpacks its settlement design and the questions left open to 2030.
Starting from the intraday liquidity gaps commercial banks face in RTGS, this article explains the three sources banks use to fill them: their own reserves, the interbank market and central bank intraday credit. It compares how major RTGS systems in the US, the euro area, the UK, mainland China and Hong Kong handle this, and draws on PFMI Principle 7 and the Basel Committee's intraday liquidity monitoring tools to show how the risks are shared.
More than twenty euro-area CSDs never merged, yet they share one settlement engine in T2S. Following a cross-border bond trade, this article explains T2S accounts, the DvP process, cross-CSD realignment and auto-collateralisation, how T2S divides work with T2, and how it compares with Bond Connect and Pontes.
A close reading of the PFMI as a complete document. It groups the 24 principles and five responsibilities for authorities by source of risk, explains how jurisdictions turn them into rules, disclosures and assessments, and leads into the CPMI-IOSCO final guidance on general business risk.
The FSB warns that while global stablecoins move 24/7 across borders, reserves and dollar redemptions face jurisdictional and market-hour constraints. We examine how time, location, and information mismatches create cross-border spillovers.