We tend to judge payment systems by the metrics we can immediately see and feel, namely speed, fees, convenience and user experience. But according to Joshua Tate, co-founder and CEO of ForumPay, those metrics only reveal part of the story. Beneath every transaction sits an economic structure, which, for decades, has shaped how money moves, and in many ways, why it moves so slowly.
“What many people don’t realize”, Tate says, “is how much banks are actually making simply from the amount of time they hold on to your funds.” It might be a simple observation, but it’s one that skews our perspective of contemporary payment systems. We often assume the financial system is designed to move money as quickly and efficiently as possible. But as Tate argues, delay itself has become part of the business model.
“When I learned the amount of money that banks earn during even the limited time they’re holding your funds during a wire transfer, it completely changed how I viewed the infrastructure,” he explains. “Every second that the bank holds those funds, they’re earning interest on them. So they’re disincentivized to actually move money quickly.”
At an individual level, those delays may appear insignificant, but when inflated to a global scale, the economics become enormous. Across clearing windows, settlement cycles, correspondent banking relationships, and internal processing systems, value is being continuously generated as money remains in transit. The operational friction encountered by consumers is often a byproduct of the way legacy financial institutions derive profit from the very process of moving funds.
That same complexity is built into the architecture behind card payments. Tate recalls one of the moments that most shaped his understanding of the industry: “One of the biggest realizations for me was understanding how many participants are involved in a simple credit card transaction,” he says. The average card payment can involve anywhere between six and nine separate entities before a merchant ultimately receives funds. Issuers, acquirers, processors, gateways, networks, settlement providers and banks all sit within the transaction flow, each introducing additional layers of cost, timing and dependency. “It’s stacks on stacks on stacks,” Tate says.
Over time, those layers became normalized. Financial infrastructure evolved around fragmented systems, delayed settlement and intermediaries that were never truly optimized for transparency or interoperability. Instead, the industry adapted around legacy incentives that rewarded control over the movement of money rather than the efficiency of it. According to Tate, this is exactly what makes blockchain-powered payment infrastructures such a revolutionary innovation.
“Newer payment rails, particularly those built on blockchain systems, reduce the need for extended processing cycles and intermediaries by enabling direct settlement between parties,” he explains. “The result is a system where speed becomes the baseline expectation.”
For Tate, the real significance of crypto payments extends far beyond speculation or digital assets themselves. The larger transformation lies in creating infrastructure that allows different forms of value to become interoperable in real time. “I think there’s a general misunderstanding of the concept of the digitization of the dollar, for example”, he says. “It’s not just about a CBDC or replacing traditional money. It’s about creating a digital representation of assets, be that cash, stocks, equity, crypto, and making them usable.”
ForumPay's design is built upon this very principle. Joshua Tate describes the company not just as a processor for cryptocurrency transactions, but as the infrastructure needed to connect traditional financial systems with digital assets in everyday commercial environments.
“ForumPay essentially has the capability to turn any digital asset into something you can actually use to pay for things every day.” The implications extend well beyond crypto-native consumers. Tate sees a future in which everyday transactions don’t require the cumbersome process of off-ramping investments, transferring capital across banks or enduring lengthy settlement periods. Instead, purchases would be completed with a level of fluidity that traditional financial systems currently lack.
“Imagine not having to liquidate stock in order to buy a house,” he says. “You could convert tokenized stock into cash the same way we turn Bitcoin into cash today.” In that future, payment systems become less dependent on siloed banking infrastructure and more dependent on fluid networks capable of transferring value instantly between different asset classes. “It turns everything into money,” Tate adds.
Stablecoins are already accelerating that transition. Tate argues that the fundamental value of stablecoins lies in their role as efficient settlement infrastructure, rather than in the common public focus on adoption or regulation.“Try and make a wire transfer for $10 million and see how long it takes,” he says. “Then make a $10 million transfer using USDT and see how long that takes.” The difference is significant, and it is structural. “There are numerous examples of how the provision and transfer of funds anywhere in the world is simply more efficient leveraging stablecoins,” he explains.
Tate believes these developments are part of a much broader transition toward global digital financial infrastructure adoption. While he acknowledges that legacy systems won't vanish overnight, he views these current advancements as part of a realignment. “There will still be demand for traditional systems,” he says. “But the dominance will move toward digital infrastructure as Web3 evolves, as AI evolves, and as the broader financial ecosystem becomes more interconnected.”
Under Joshua Tate’s leadership, ForumPay is building the infrastructure needed to integrate digital assets into the very fabric of daily transactions. As businesses, consumers, and digital asset users embrace this evolving ecosystem, ForumPay will provide the means to bridge blockchain-based assets with real-world commerce.
Because, if Tate is right, blockchain’s greatest contribution to payments is not merely faster settlement, but the transformation of value itself into something more fluid, interoperable and seamlessly transferable.
We often measure the payments industry according to speed, cost, and user experience. These are visible, measurable metrics that are easy to compare. However, they don't fully explain why money moves the way it does. Underlying every transaction is a set of incentives that determine how the entire system operates. Apparently straightforward transfers of value are, in reality, mechanisms involving the holding, routing, and processing of money, each of which carries its own economic implications.
Within this paradigm, time is never neutral; nor are access or control over the movement. Over time, the infrastructure supporting payments has evolved to extract value along the transaction journey. End users may not always be aware of these dynamics, but they are integral to how the traditional system functions.
A commonly overlooked yet critical aspect of payments is what happens while money is in transit. Many assume that the system is designed to move funds as quickly and efficiently as possible.
But in practice, the situation is more nuanced, because every second that the bank holds those funds, they’re earning interest on them. It’s a simple enough notion, yet it completely changes how you view the system. If holding funds generates value, then time becomes an integral factor in the process. Rather, it becomes part of the system's economics.
At scale, this has phenomenal implications. Between clearing windows, settlement cycles, and internal processes, what seems like a slight delay at the individual level accumulates into a consistent source of value. This is not limited to one participant either. Rather, it is embedded within the structure of the system. Value is made to stay within the system in order to leverage it.
Over time, these incentives have become entwined to shape the structure of the system itself. What appears as operational friction, in fact reflects how value is distributed within the network. As new layers were introduced to address specific challenges, they also created new opportunities for participation and revenue. The result is a system where efficiency is not always the priority.
If each point of interaction contributes to the system's overall economics, whether through fees, access, or control over timing, then it's understandable why participants would be hesitant to change the status quo. What is beginning to emerge is an alternative approach to this model. Newer, blockchain-based payment infrastructures are designed with different priorities from the outset.
By enabling more direct forms of settlement, they reduce reliance on extended processing times, layered intermediaries, and the need to extract value from the movement itself. In doing so, these systems emphasize speed, lower cost, and transparency. More importantly, they begin to shift the balance of benefit back towards the system's user, rather than its maker.
Newer payment rails, particularly those built on blockchain systems, are designed with different priorities in mind. They reduce the need for extended processing cycles and intermediaries by enabling direct settlement between parties. The result is a system in which speed becomes the baseline expectation.
Transparency is another characteristic that sets these systems apart. Transactions can be verified in real time with clear visibility into movement and settlement, thereby reducing reliance on opaque processes and post-transaction reconciliation, replacing them with a more immediate and accessible form of trust.
With fewer intermediaries and less reliance on legacy infrastructure, the cost of moving value can be significantly reduced. What was once distributed across multiple participants is now streamlined into a more efficient process. Taken together, these developments represent a more user-centric infrastructure that focuses on enabling faster, clearer, and more cost-effective transactions, rather than extracting value from the process itself.
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Moving money has become incredibly simple. With just a tap or click, value moves seemingly instantly. This seamless, almost invisible process is the result of careful design. However, the underlying network that supports every transaction is complex and far from straightforward. Most people don’t realize, however, that a single payment can involve multiple institutions working in sequentially layered systems that have been developed over time to support how money moves. In many cases, six to nine different participants are involved in processing a single standard card transaction. These participants work behind the scenes to complete what appears to be a single action. The result is a system that works, but which has become increasingly cumbersome through years of incremental fixes and additions. It operates within parameters that were never intended for the speed, scale, and demands of the modern digital economy.
The fragility of the global payments system does not lie in its failure, but rather in its dependence on an increasingly complex and growing number of moving parts. This intricacy makes it progressively harder for the system to adapt and keep up with user expectations.
Modern payment systems are not intentionally designed as a unified structure. Their complexity comes from decades of incremental fixes , with each new layer representing a solution to a specific problem at a specific point in time.
Today, what we are left with is an accumulation of solutions, not a streamlined system. A single transaction moves through multiple intermediaries —such as issuers, acquirers, processors, and networks— each of which plays a role in what appears to be a simple exchange. But if we scratch the surface, any standard card payment can involve six to nine different participants; stack upon stack upon stack, working behind the scenes.
As each layer introduces its own processes and dependencies, the distance between initiation and settlement increases. The very improvements that once enhanced the system have over time compounded into something far more complex than originally intended. Again, it works, but on an architecture that has grown far beyond its original design.
Complexity isn't inherently the problem. The difficulty lies in the dependence it creates. With each new layer added to the payment process, a new element is introduced that must work correctly for the overall success of the system. Each of the multiple third parties has its own system, protocols, and timelines. Every link in the chain matters. If one part slows, fails, or needs reconciling, the chain is weakened.
Much of this infrastructure is built on legacy technology. It was designed for an era with lower transaction volumes, slower expectations, and less need for real-time coordination. Now, these systems are being forced to operate in an altogether different context, not the one they were designed to support. Something doesn't need to break often to be considered fragile. Sometimes, it's enough for it to rely on too many things working at once.
If complexity and fragility are the result of how traditional systems evolved, then the next step is not to further patch them, but instead to rethink their structure altogether. Luckily most of the hard work has already been done, we just need to apply it.
Unlike traditional payment systems, newer payment infrastructures eliminate the need for intermediaries by facilitating direct transactions. Rather than routing transactions through multiple institutions, value can move more directly between parties thereby reducing the number of dependencies and the time it takes to settle.
This is where digital asset infrastructure can change the playing field. By enabling direct, peer-to-peer transfers, it bypasses many of the layers that have come to typify traditional payment flows. The impact is speed and simplicity. Fewer intermediaries mean fewer points of failure, fewer reconciliation requirements, and, overall, less friction.
This doesn't mean the existing system needs to disappear. This new infrastructure introduces an alternative that can interact and integrate with the old. In many cases, it becomes a connective layer that sits alongside traditional rails rather than replacing them. This allows assets to move more efficiently between the two systems, and over time, this interoperability reduces reliance on legacy complexity without requiring a complete rebuild.
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When we talk about the “digitization of the dollar”, we need to be clear about exactly what this term refers to. It is a contentious topic, especially when the discussion turns to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). But an idea, it is in fact much more extensive in scope. Indeed, it has the potential to extend the current understanding of money and its applications beyond the confines imposed today.
Many people assume that a digital dollar refers specifically to a CBDC, but there are two distinct conversations. Active legislation is being proposed in several jurisdictions, including the United States, aimed at either limiting or prohibiting CBDCs. Regardless of one’s opinion on these measures, they underscore a key point: the digitization of the dollar should not require government-issued digital currency. The true innovation lies in decentralized tokenization.
For me, the digitization of the dollar can be likened to the tokenization of real-world assets. It's a simple idea: rather than having assets confined to separate financial systems, such as banks, brokerages, exchanges, or payment networks, these assets can exist as on-chain digital representations. Imagine a digital wallet that holds various forms of value, including cash, stablecoins, Bitcoin, tokenized stocks, equity holdings, and other tokenized assets, such as your house.
In this kind of environment, the distinctions between different asset classes start to diminish. Although the assets themselves remain unique, the underlying infrastructure facilitates their movement and interaction. In essence, the digitization of the dollar pertains not just to currency but to creating an infrastructure layer that allows value (and the asset it represents) to move more fluidly.
Currently, using specific assets for everyday transactions often involves a multi-step and multi-infrastructure process. You might need to sell stock to generate liquidity, move the proceeds into a brokerage account, then to a bank account, and finally through a payment method. This system is laden with intermediaries and settlement delays.
But digital infrastructure changes this dynamic. If assets are available in tokenized form, conversion can occur instantly at the point of transaction. Instead of liquidating assets and waiting for settlement, the system can directly convert the value into the necessary form for payment. This means that a tokenized stock, a stablecoin, or Bitcoin can all serve as usable payment instruments without the conventional friction involved.
This is where the digitization of the dollar intersects with a broader trend: the tokenization of financial assets. At the World Liberty Forum earlier this year, leaders from major financial institutions indicated a growing consensus across the industry, that eventually, most financial assets will likely be tokenized. That includes equities, bonds, funds, and other instruments that currently exist within traditional financial systems.
Once this transition occurs, the focus will shift from whether assets are digital to how easily those assets can interact with one another. The effectiveness of payment infrastructure becomes crucial in this context. If tokenized assets exist but cannot seamlessly move between systems, their benefits will be limited. However, if they can transfer effortlessly, the implications are profound.
Economists often refer to six characteristics of money: durability, portability, divisibility, uniformity, limited supply, and acceptability. Digital infrastructure alters how these characteristics apply across different asset classes. When assets can be tokenized, transferred, converted, and utilized within payment networks instantly, the practical definition of money begins to broaden. In such an environment, value becomes more fluid. A digital dollar, a stablecoin, a tokenized stock, or another asset can all function as payment instruments depending on the context. This is not because they are identical, but because the infrastructure enables them to be used interchangeably when needed.
The true transformation is not limited to currency alone; it is occurring at the infrastructure level. As financial systems modernize, the capacity to represent assets digitally and transfer them across interoperable payment networks will redefine how value is stored, transferred, and utilized. That is the deeper significance of the digitization of the dollar. It is not just about introducing a new digital currency; it is about creating a financial system in which value, in various forms, can move as easily as information.
