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The Digital Financial Services Observatory (DFSO) is a project of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information (CITI) has been a research project, working with governments and organizations in the Digital Financial Services (DFS) field to advance financial inclusion, provide a deep set of global standards in the rapidly emerging transformations driving digital finance globally.
Sponsored by generous contribution of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The DFSO is releasing its project on an accelerated scale to enable digital financial standards, in an effort to both create a more inclusive and secure foundation, and further analyze the impacts, transformations and develop intelligence-based standards in digital finance.
CITI, founded in 1983, is the first research center for communications economics, management, and policy established Columbia University, New York USA. Since its creation, CITI has a tradition of identifying and anticipating key issues before they reach general visibility and of providing a balanced perspective and a neutral meeting ground for stakeholders. It has published over 70 books and special journal issues, and over one thousand research articles.
The DFSO focuses on the intersection of policy and technology in DFS. Since its inception in 2016, the DFSO has been supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The DFSO has been at the forefront of approaches assisting in the growing DFS ecosystems and in advancing financial standards and inclusion.
The DFSO has established a global audience of financial and technical experts as well as governmental agencies and regulators, and has created a community of over 6,000 professionals and academics from around the world. Areas of focus are:
1. Payments and remittances
2. Banking transformation
3. Compliance
4. Fintech and Regtech
5. Mobile communications infrastructure and applications
6. Blockchain technology
7. Cryptocurrencies
8. Cybersecurity
9. Policy and governance
10. Law and regulation
The DFSO has established the Ten Tenants of Digital Financial Services as comprehensive set of operable standards to ensure a scalable, structured and secure growth path as the transition to a the DFS ecosystem continues to unfold globally. Utilization and measurement of the standards basis, alongside advanced technology including blockchain and AI, will ensure a model of DFS specifications and security in the future.
The DFSO will introduce for beta review, the operationalizing platform for enterprise, institutions and governments in December 2020 at the Singapore Fintech Festival, with BlockCerts.com Blockchain – with operational release of DFSO Node Containers Q1 2021.
DFS is a rapidly scaling, low-cost means of digital access to transactional financial services. The impact of mobile devices, alongside the pandemic of 2020 have accelerated the need for the Ten Tenants of DFS.
Significant factors which include ‘mobile money’ or ‘mobile financial services’, are driving DFS at scale in developing countries to advance financial inclusion and provide much-needed low-cost access to primarily transactional financial services. Many hundreds of non-bank DFS Providers in the developing world offering services to over 800 million people, many of whom had no prior access to formal financial institutions.
Alongside this expansive growth due to increased, inclusive financial markets, are the critical factors to ensure a secure global ecosystem in DFS.
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Operationalization of the DFSO standards is underway. BlockCerts.com Blockchain is providing the implementation path, for the DFSO, to provide the standards based on the blockchain based authentication, transparency and distributed models based on the distributed ledger technology ensured by blockchain. BlockCerts.com embeds the fundamentals of authentication (commonly known as KYC) to ensure the participants in implementing, improving and authenticating standards are validated.
The DFSO BlockCerts implementation will enable participants to utilize, participate in the evolution of the DFSO and implement at scale through the distributed application “DAPP” node and Secure Virtual Space Containers, that are made operable on BlockCerts, are currently being formatted for the DFSO with the support of BlockCerts. DFSO Nodes and Containers will be available to the community in Q1 2021.
The DFSO containers will be deployable across any platform, technology or model by the DFSO participant community.
Insights and evolution, at a rapid pace in the digital ecosystem are a mandate immediately. A call for the support of digital standards models is underway. The DFSO is establishing a founder’s community, and is seeking input via a call for papers, as the commercial models emerge Q1 2021.
Our activities can be viewed on our website at https://dfsobservatory.com
Actionable Risk Management Framework (A-RMF) for Cybersecurity in DFS: The DFS ecosystem is comprised of actors who vary greatly with respect to organizational size, maturity and capabilities. This makes it difficult to achieve standards for cyber-security. The DFSO developed a risk management framework that combines international cybersecurity standards, best practices, and proprietary IP. To generate cyber hygiene, we created a platform which can be implemented by a multiplicity of actors. The A-RMF provides proactive process steps to best protect from potential cybersecurity incidents, as well as reactive process steps should a cybersecurity incident happen. The A-RMF is tailored towards the capabilities of a DFS actor. It strives to ensure that activities and operations and services operate within a safe and secure environment to maintain the confidentiality and integrity of data and information; that funds are secure, with availability only to authorized parties; and that the impact of cyber-attacks is minimized.
Founders Network Nodes
Introduced Q12021
Continued growth in the adoption of digital financial services (DFS) requires that the industry, the public, and regulators have confidence in the ability of DFS providers to safeguard their platforms and protect consumer and business users from suffering losses from cyber-attacks (and achieve substantially greater compliance with existing regulation.) A major cyber-attack resulting in losses to customers could reverse the advances digital financial services have already achieved. We provide guidelines and model rules, a risk management framework, a cybersecurity response, a regional collaboration tool, a regulatory compliance mechanism, and a resource management tool. Our development of the A-RMF, together with other initiatives, help regulators and providers understand and deal with cybersecurity threats.
New Initiatives
1. Cybersecurity, Regtech and Crisis Readiness Tools. We plan to build three cybersecurity and regtech tools. Our initiative has identified blockchain as a candidate for interoperating and decentralizing platforms.
2. Model Rules for the Automated RMF and the Cybersecurity Hub. In most of those countries where DFS is essential, there is a conspicuous lack of cybersecurity laws, regulations, rules, and enforcement. The DFSO will develop model cyber security rules and policies that can be incorporated into the automated RMF.
3. A Digital Financial Services Journal. It will feature peer-reviewed academic articles focused on DFS and financial inclusion, along with select noteworthy reports for DFS professionals and court opinions.
Continuation of our Existing Programs. The DFSO will continue to build upon the success of its summits, roundtables, webinars, research and whitepapers by holding several virtual collaborative sessions for global exploration, discussion and capacity building on key topics and concepts of importance to DFS and financial inclusion. The DFSO also plans to expand the size and reach of its curated DFS database of laws and regulations and enhance the capabilities of the A-RMF.