Author: Roger Heines

Roger Heines holds a doctorate from the University of St. Gallen in the field of digital assets and blockchain technology. He has extensive experience in consulting and founding digital and decentralized business models. In addition to his work as a management consultant at the Business Engineering Institute St. Gallen, Roger Heines teaches various courses on blockchain, DLT, digital assets, cryptocurrencies, and Web3.

Banking-as-a-Service in Switzerland: Between growth driver and market reality

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Banking-as-a-Service is often described as a major growth market. But building a profitable business in it is harder than it first looks.

Dr. Roger Heines looked into how BaaS is actually developing in Switzerland, and what determines which providers make money from it.

A few things stood out:
1. The lines between bank, technology provider and service partner are dissolving. Many providers are now all three at the same time.
2. The difference rarely lies in the product range. What matters more is integration into existing systems and solid operational execution.
3. Without scale, the business stays difficult. Standardisation and automation are a basic requirement here.

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AI, All, Data, Digitization, News, Nicht kategorisiert, technologies

Agentic wallets – the next building block for autonomous AI assistants

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In his latest blog post, Dr. Roger Heines explores how AI agents equipped with agentic wallets, stablecoins, and the x402 protocol can act autonomously – making decisions, booking services, and executing payments.

Highlights :

– Why traditional payment rails fail for machine-based transactions
– How x402 turns HTTP into a payment layer for APIs
– What “Know Your Agent” means for banks, compliance, and governance

An essential read for financial innovators looking to shape the emerging machine-to-machine economy.

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The IT Financial System of Tomorrow: From Pure Banking IT to a Connected Business Architecture

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The financial IT system of tomorrow is modular, open, and networked. It enables customer-centric service bundles and embedded finance within ecosystems, leverages data and AI broadly, and ensures compliance automatically. The core remains as a critical piece of infrastructure, but in a slimmer and more invisible form. Those who think “service-first” today, orchestrate real-time data, and embrace DevOps operations are laying the groundwork for scalable business models in a connected financial world of tomorrow.

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Decentralized identities as enablers in open banking

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The digital transformation has profoundly changed the way banking services are used. Banking advice is no longer limited to visiting a branch – customers now expect a seamless, cross-channel experience when accessing banking products. Decentralized identities, also known as Self-Sovereign Identities (SSI), could play a crucial role in this and further change the relationship between banks and their customers. In this article, we will take a closer look at the most important aspects, challenges and opportunities of this development.

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All, Data, Digitization, Nicht kategorisiert, OpenBankingProject, technologies

Web3 and the future of the Internet: opportunities and challenges for the financial world (Part II)

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Where we looked at blockchain technology as the foundation of Web3 in the first part of this series of articles, in this blog post Roger Heines looks at other important elements of the Web3 concept such as the token economy, DApps, DeFi and SSI as well as the opportunities and challenges of Web3 for the financial services industry.

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Web3 and the future of the Internet: opportunities and challenges for the financial world (Part I)

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The internet has developed rapidly since its creation in the 1960s. From the purely static Web 1.0 to the dynamic Web 2.0 to the emerging decentralized Web3. But what exactly does Web3 mean and what role does this next stage in the evolution of the Internet play? For the financial sector, this could have far-reaching implications and at the same time offer immense opportunities. This blog post describes the evolution of the internet and the technology behind Web3.

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Study: Digitalization in Procurement Management

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The digital revolution has reached the business world, and procurement management is no exception. The latest study by the Business Engineering Institute St. Gallen, “Digitalization in Procurement Management”, sheds light on how profoundly digitalization is changing this area. This blog post summarizes the key findings of the study to shed light on the opportunities and challenges that digital transformation brings for companies.

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This was the Open Banking Summit 2023

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After the successful Summit 2022, the doors opened again on August 24th at Google in Zurich for this year’s Open Banking Summit 2023. With over 100 participants and top-class speakers, the OpenBankingProject once again proved to be one of the enterprise networks in the context of Open Banking. This blog post summarizes the content of the Open Banking Summit 2023.

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Collaborative value creation in digital ecosystems: Success factors using the example of a blockchain-based tokenization platform 

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Nearly all companies today operate in ecosystems. Traditional business networks are giving way to this new value creation model, in which multiple organizations collaborate to more effectively meet the needs of customers. This shift to ecosystem-based value creation requires efficient coordination and the use of technology. In this regard, an innovative enabler for the establishment of digital ecosystems is blockchain. But what are the capabilities to participate as an actor in these new platforms? In this paper, we will take a closer look at these platforms using an existing example and derive initial insights for success factors in shared value creation.

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Part II: Need for Change – Transformational Needs and Best Practices for Enterprises Using Distributed Ledger Technologies

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Distributed ledger technology (DLT) makes it possible to guarantee the integrity of transactions without a central authority. This innovation is therefore seen as having the potential to revolutionize existing financial market infrastructures in the long term [1]. However, the adoption and use of DLT-based platforms has multiple implications for businesses. The technology brings not only technical but also organizational challenges that require new competencies in various business functions. In this article, we explain which challenges affect which corporate functions and which best practices a company can follow when implementing change.

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Need for Change – Challenges for Companies in Using Distributed Ledger Technologies

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Digital products and services are not only changing the everyday life of individuals or society. The new technologies on which they are based can also lead to changes in operational IT in a wide range of business areas, especially in service companies. The distributed ledger technology, a new form of a distributed database, which ensures the integrity of all types of transactions without a central authority, is one such technology. Besides the question, in which areas it can be used, companies therefore also have to ask what internal impact can be expected when using this technology.

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Insights from the Open Banking Summit 2022

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“Financial Industry Meets BigTech”: On the 25th of August 2022, the third Open Banking Summit opened its doors in the Google event rooms in Zurich. The OpenBankingProject.ch organized this event for the third time and once again provided a stimulating get-together on the topic of open banking. The event featured national and international success stories, and the subsequent panel discussion reflected on and discussed selected topics and questions posed by the audience. Once again this year, around 120 decision-makers from the Swiss financial sector gathered to learn about current developments and to network over the subsequent aperitif.

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Classification of Blockchain-Based Applications: A Conceptualization from a User Perspective

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Despite many known advantages, it is still difficult, especially for practitioners, to identify concrete application areas for blockchain-based applications. This article takes this as its starting point and presents a sector-independent typology of application fields, which not only serves to analyze existing blockchain applications, but also provides users with an orientation as to which general possible uses there are for the blockchain and how complex an initial implementation of the respective applications can turn out to be.

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The Convergence of Distributed Ledger Technology and Artificial Intelligence Exemplified by the Lending Process (Part 3)

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In the first two contributions to this three-part series, we have shown that the simultaneous use of distributed ledger technology and artificial intelligence can improve today’s lending process in many ways. However, the lending process is only one of many processes that can potentially benefit from the merging of DLT and AI. In the following we have compiled the process characteristics that indicate that a process leads to the convergence of the two technologies and can therefore be optimized by them.

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The Convergence of Distributed Ledger Technology and Artificial Intelligence Exemplified by the Lending Process (Part 2)

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Technological convergence means that two or more technologies merge into a single system that is more powerful than each of the technologies individually. Since AI and DLT are technologies that have some opposing characteristics (e.g., centrality vs. decentralization; transparency vs. black box), the two technologies complement each other and can compensate for crucial weaknesses of the other. Since the lending process is one of the main processes in the banking business and involves both communication and data analysis (AI) and the transmission of sensitive data (DLT), it is ideally suited for a practical examination of both the prerequisites and the effects of technological convergence.

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The Convergence of Distributed Ledger Technology and Artificial Intelligence Exemplified by the Lending Process (Part 1)

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The distributed ledger technology (DLT) and artificial intelligence (AI) are two promising technologies that are at the top of their hype cycle. Scientists assume that the convergence of the blockchain, the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence offers considerable opportunities, such as accelerating the pace of service, process and business model innovations. However, the information available in the current literature and research on how such an integration could be implemented in practice is still sparse. Over the next week, this series of articles will explore how specific elements of DLT and AI can be combined to achieve potential technological convergence, and what significance this convergence has for the lending process.

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