- Stefan Hoops, head of the corporate division at Deutsche Bank, has indicated that the banking giant is “assessing” IOTA’s technology.
- In a report published two years ago, Deutsche Bank already highlighted the potential of IOTA.
The IOTA Tangle can be used in a wide range of applications. In this sense, the IOTA Foundation is also known to establish use cases in diverse industries such as mobility & automotive, global trade & supply chain, customs and border management, digital identities, smart cities, industrial IoT and e-health. However, the banking and finance sector, where cryptocurrencies actually have their roots, has not been a major topic for IOTA yet.
However, as the head of the corporate division at Deutsche Bank, Stefan Hoops, indicated, this could possibly change. Frank Schwab, who is a strategic advisor, speaker, board member at Gulf International Bank and PayU, and co-founder of the FinTech Forum, spread the big news on Twitter:
The origin of the commentary was a discussion that Schwab initiated via LinkedIn. In a post, the advisor shared his opinion that the IOTA Foundation should focus on projects that aim to use the Tangle in the area of machine-to-machine economics and IoT payments.
The machine age has already begun. Traditional payment systems were built for people, not machines. IOTA is a promising platform for efficient M2M payments and the machine age. There are several interesting IOTA ecosystem projects and rapidly growing patent applications.
The cryptocurrency IOTA is still a very risky investment, but with great potential. The IOTA Foundation should focus on projects and activities that keep an eye on the growth of M2M / IoT payments and volumes.
Wolfgang Wössner, a professor for banking, digital finance and asset management at the DHBW Mosbach, Germany, took the floor. He explained that German manufacturers, “even though they are world market leaders today”, are facing a “tough-to-manage transition from pipeline to platform business models”. With this in mind, Wössner predicted that new solutions would be necessary to secure Germany’s position in the global economy:
New sales and financing solutions like assets-as-a-service or models of embedded finance will emerge, wherer payments are linked to data transmissioned by the machines themselves. A common standard with a strong German participation from the scratch would be very helpful in order to safeguard the strong industrial position of today. The business logic seems to make a whole lot of sense.
Furthermore, Wössner described two conceivable use cases for IOTA, which could also be of great importance for German banks, as he stated:
1. Amazon Go-like payments at gasoline stations (you wouldn´t have to stroll inside the station, just drive away – and let your car pay)
2. Allow your self driving car to earn some money for you while your at work – e.g. as part of an Uber fleet (earnings dependant on driven miles). Doesn´t sound that interesting for German banks as well?
Stefan Hoops, one of Deutsche Bank’s top managers, responded to this comment by briefly explaining that Deutsche Bank is currently “assessing it”.
Thanks you for highlighting, Wolf Wössner. We are assessing it right now.
In a report published more than two years ago on “Cryptocurrencies and blockchains – Their importance for the future”, Deutsche Bank already concluded that “IOTA has solved the fundamental problems of blockchain, because it is scalable and does not cause any costs.” However, the extent to which IOTA’s Tangle technology has been studied and assessed since then remains unknown.
