AI and stablecoins: powering the future of Open Finance

Wolf Ruzicka, Chief Commercial Officer at Unlimit, discusses how stablecoins and AI will transform the future of Open Finance.

Open Finance is the practice of using APIs to enable third parties to access user data and build new solutions. By connecting the highly stable infrastructure built by major traditional financial institutions with agile fintech disruptors aimed at solving specific user pain points, Open Finance is driving significant collaboration and innovation. 

The potential benefits of Open Finance for consumers and businesses are numerous, and include: seamless account aggregation and management, personalised financial services, and simplified product comparisons. 

These benefits rely on two fundamental principles:

1. Users have access to their financial data and can opt to share this with third parties.
2. All financial systems and platforms are able to communicate and exchange data.

This is the foundational role played by APIs in enabling third parties to communicate in real-time with existing systems, then access, retrieve, and interpret financial data. With the data analysed, third parties can then solve industry challenges, like compiling a diversified portfolio into one platform, and enable additional services, like initiating predictable, programmable payments. 

As major financial institutions gradually adopt Open Finance plans, and the global regulatory environment continues to develop positively, it is vital to consider how emergent technologies, like stablecoins and AI, can help to make all financial services truly ‘open’.

AI-elevated Open Finance

The real value of Open Finance lies in interpreting user data. AI can interpret complex webs of data at remarkable speed and scale, so it is easy to see how AI systems could deliver immediate benefits for developing new Open Finance solutions. 

AI’s potential value is not restricted to purely processing raw data into new actionable insights during the interpretation step. AI agents can also help execute the solutions built on these insights. For instance, at Unlimit, we’re developing AI systems that process data sets and then match merchants with the right payment solutions for them. 

The Royal Bank of Canada’s experiment with AI-powered digital assistants is a great example of how AI’s ability to interpret and execute data-driven processes can provide customers with valuable new solutions. By analysing users’ account data (like transaction patterns), their tools can use predictive analysis models to automatically save money for users.

Borderless coins for a borderless future

Stablecoins are fundamental to the future of Open Finance. They are faster, cheaper, more easily programmable, and require significantly fewer intermediaries than traditional money. This makes them uniquely capable of fulfilling a role fiat currencies simply cannot: effortlessly enabling complex, automated, near-instant cross-border transactions. 

This enabling of near-instant borderless payments is essential to providing users with a seamless, comprehensive cross-platform experience. It makes little sense for users to be able to easily access their multiple accounts, products, or portfolios in one space, but then require outside intermediaries (and their added fees) to seamlessly move money globally. 

By using APIs to seamlessly integrate stablecoin wallets with users’ financial accounts, these stablecoins can then, in turn, be used to fulfil the transactions requested by other APIs. APIs are integrating the solution to their own biggest challenge and ensuring that the new borderless systems can use borderless currencies. 

In addition to greater speed and security, stablecoins offer enhanced transparency – a major advantage for Open Finance, as they ensure transaction data remains both available and easily accessible. Every transaction on a blockchain is recorded on a ledger, meaning the data can easily be traced, audited, and analysed by third parties. This is not the case for the historically tightly controlled systems of traditional financial institutions, which typically require complex, costly internal restructurings to enable API support. 

Stablecoins will ensure that the Open Finance solutions built on user data can effectively function and play a crucial role in enhancing the supply of the initial data which APIs interpret. 

Open Finance has the potential to be transformative, but its success will require more than regulatory momentum or incremental innovation. We must intelligently leverage AI-led systems to collate and interpret user data, and then use stablecoins to autonomously execute transactions – creating a financial ecosystem that is seamless, borderless, and truly open.

About the author

Wolf Ruzicka is Chief Commercial Officer at Unlimit, leading global strategy and growth through AI solutions. With 25+ years in tech, he scaled EastBanc Technologies, guided Solvd’s strategic advisory, and led APIphany to acquisition by Microsoft. Formerly with MicroStrategy, he is also an entrepreneur, investor, and author of AI Driven. Wolf serves on multiple boards, advises global enterprises, and mentors within the technology and venture community.

 

About the company

Founded in 2009, Unlimit is a global fintech company that offers a large portfolio of financial services, including payment processing, Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS), multi-currency business accounts and an on- and off-ramp fiat solution for crypto, DeFi, and GameFi. The company’s mission is to deliver solutions that eliminate financial borders, enabling businesses to operate both locally and internationally with ease across Europe, the UK, LATAM, APAC, India, and Africa.