 Welcome to the ITU studio in Geneva where we're very pleased to be joined today by Anne-Sophie Catré, who is the Executive Director for Consensus in France and very welcome to the studio. Thank you very much. Now, let's talk a little bit about that consensus. Your startup, you're involved in blockchain technologies, is that right? Yes, that's correct. We're a global company and we're focusing on blockchain. Fantastic. Okay, let's talk a little bit about blockchain technologies. How can blockchain technologies be used for innovative payment systems in financial inclusion? Yes. I think it's quite interesting because especially in emerging countries where essentially the technology may not be as mature, maybe as in other countries, I think blockchain can definitely play a very important and structural role for these types of countries. There are many applications but I think one which is quite interesting and maybe more important to start with is in terms of payments and cash token. We call it also stablecoin, so there are different appellations. But I think it's quite interesting especially with what's going on with Libra and what we're hearing about stablecoin. And there is really an opportunity actually for cash to be tokenized and to simplify actually the entire, I would say, value chain of payments in emerging countries. Maybe as an example, there is a project actually which is called I2I that we launched actually early this year in the Philippines and the idea is really to facilitate domestic payments within islands in the Philippines because it's important to know that in the Philippines actually approximately 70% of the population actually is unbanked and people are essentially living in more than 7,000 islands. So there is very little infrastructure and means of payments actually for people to transfer money from one island to another and many people actually live out of fishing and actually need to be able to send money to their family across different islands. So one actually solution that we put in place with Union Bank was essentially to facilitate this type of payment where cash is simply deposited at a local branch and then is tokenized and what happens is that then the payments actually can be done almost real time within a few minutes and then the person on the island can receive actually the transfer and the money actually in just a few minutes. So I think there are solutions like this one that will most likely see emerging in these countries which may replace also some mobile payment solution so I think it's quite interesting for emerging countries to look at these types of solutions to see how it will evolve. So that's interbank connectivity, is that right? Inter branch, yes and it can become also interbank connectivity and I think the roadmap is also to evolve towards central bank digital currencies but I think it's important to start also with these types of simple within closed ecosystem solutions and then slowly evolve towards more open solutions. Now let's talk about security and data privacy. I think they are going to be key to playing a role in winning consumer confidence and catalyzing the adoption of fintech for financial inclusion, perhaps you could share your perspective on that with us. Yeah I think you know when we speak about financial services, data privacy of course is one key element. I think to me it's going to be really important to understand the technology, to really understand the technology, what it means to create a private network on a blockchain, what it means to create a public network on a blockchain and really get an understanding of where we stand in terms of governance, what are the best practices and how data can be protected you know in a way. So I think there are like a lot of opportunities but also maybe risk and threat you know to some degrees and I think it's really a matter of kind of getting to understand the technology and being reassured that actually there are solutions and there are of course privacy solutions to make sure that we don't breach you know any regulations of course. And that it's going to be conducted in a secure environment and one that one's not going to lose the one's financial investment in it. Yeah definitely and I think also when we especially when we start to talk about blockchain and digital cash on a blockchain you know what it means is that at the end of the day this cash will benefit from the properties of the blockchain you know which are essentially transparency, security as well as the aspect where we can essentially you know use a smart contract to embed some rules some business logic you know behind that. So there is definitely there are definitely a lot of opportunities but I think it's also important to understand you know how smart contract work and to make sure that the right level of security and audit and testing are embedded when these types of smart contracts are being implemented and throughout actually the life cycle I would say of these types of financial instruments because yeah there are kind of implications you know which are which can be can be quite quite severe so but there are definitely tools as well you know like for instance mistakes or other types of tools where essentially developers can from the get-go actually use these tools to ensure that whatever they are developing is not vulnerable to external threats and is actually secured proof you know I miss it. Now we're here at security clinic for Fiji the financial inclusion global initiative here I wanted to ask you what are the security challenges I know you touched upon this but but in a little bit more detail concerning the use of blockchain technologies in the area of payments. Yeah so I think to me you know as I mentioned the utilization of smart contract and the understanding of how smart contracts work is key I think when we speak about cyber security it's not so different you know at the end of the day than any other application but from the moment we have a tokenized currency or digital currency on a blockchain we can associate a certain number of rules and this is what's really specific actually to the blockchain and what needs actually to be I would say bullet proof so like for instance I was mentioning the project I2I just before so before it went live actually right now it's in in production or in an MVP mode I would say the smart contract actually was audited by actually our consensus diligence arm and I think it's really important to embed these types of best practice from the get go so we don't run into surprises afterwards. Very enough well thank you very much for joining us here at the Fiji security clinic and of course here in the studio today and we wish you the very best of luck with all the projects that you've you've got happening now and hopefully we'll catch up with you again at some stage in the very near future. I hope so thank you very much. Thank you.