Stellar [XLM] was “sort of a natural fit”, says CTO of Tempo Money Transfer

Anthony Barker, Chief Technology Officer [CTO] of a Paris based international money transfer firm Tempo, spoke about the advantages of the Stellar network for cross-border payments in an interview with Finance Magnets.

Tempo Money Transfer is a European Union licensed, electronic payment service provider. Tempo had partnered with Stellar Development Foundation in order to reduce costs, increase its speed and reliability. Tempo is currently the main EU anchor which connects with Stellar.

Anthony was asked a series of questions which included Tempo’s integration of blockchain into its services and the shifting relationship between fiat and cryptocurrency. He replied:

“[Tempo’s] original focus was remittance and international payments, and it’s since sort of switched to small value payments, the stuff that banks don’t handle well.”

Anthony stated that the banks were responsible for about 55% of International Foreign exchange transactions whereas the licensed Non-Banking Financial Companies [Western Union] were responsible for about 33%. All these financial institutions used the SWIFT settlement system. Anthony highlighted the problem of using this system, as it was really expensive and a very slow process. Their migration into the blockchain was mainly because banks don’t do well with payment transfers under $10,000. He stated:

“It’s really expensive, it’s a nightmare [with correspondent banks]; money gets locked up and there’s no idea where it is or where it’s been blocked.”

He also spoke about their decision to choose Stellar over Ripple. Tempo felt that Stellar was “sort of a natural fit” and its non-profit and open-source status were one of the main reasons for choosing it.

Anthony believed that Ripple was not a good fit for community building and open systems, unlike Stellar which had development challenges through which the best software developers who make open-source projects would get a lot of Lumens. He also spoke about the future where customers would not even realize that a blockchain would be handling their payments.

Anthony did not think that cryptocurrencies would be replaced by fiat but he believes that cryptocurrency will play an important role in the future of the global financial sphere. He stated:

“If you live in a country with inflation, or in a country [where the government] wants to steal your money, it’s sort of like a Swiss bank account for every person”