Jean-Pierre Roth: Monetary independence and monetary stability two sides of the same coin Luncheon address by Mr Jean-Pierre Roth, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, to the FEBRABAN Brazilian Federation of Banks, Sao Paulo, 18 November 2004. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen It’s a real pleasure to be with you today. As you may know, our two countries have a long history of mutually beneficial relationships, going back as far as the 16th century. As very often in long-standing relationships, the first steps were quite difficult. In 1557, Protestant emigrants from Calvinist Geneva tried to found a “New Geneva” close to today’s Rio de Janeiro. Unfortunately, their obedience to the Protestant church was not considered as an asset at the time, and they had to leave the country rather precipitately. But hard work is a Swiss characteristic, and business relations between Brazil and Switzerland developed intensively in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1907, diplomatic representatives were sent to Berne and Rio. As a matter of fact, the enormous potential of Brazil has been attracting Swiss firms from every sector of our economy. Nestlé and Jacobs-Suchard were among the first to cross the Atlantic in the 20s of the last century, but the chemical industry with Ciba, Geigy, Sandoz and Hoffmann La Roche rapidly followed in the 30s. After the Second World War, the machine-tool industry with Brown-Bovery, Schindler and Sulzer, to name only the most famous, joined the Swiss club, followed later on by Swiss banks.
The underlying payment chain is largely the same as earlier. So far mobile payments have primarily been used for transfers between private individuals or to charities, clubs and associations. In some cases, the payee receives the funds immediately, while in other cases it may take several days. For purchases in shops, cash and cards are fast and user-friendly payment instruments. This has probably held back the rise of mobile payments in shops, although they are rising there as well. A third area is mobile payments linked to online purchases. Services are being developed in all three areas. A look at the conference programme indicates that we will be hearing more about that today. There are still some challenges facing mobile payments. Most mobile payments are made using an international payment card. As their use becomes more widespread, this solution will not be viable in the long term. It will be too expensive. Another challenge is that users have to download a large number of apps to make sure that they can send and receive mobile payments. This is not very practical for users. Communication between apps, so-called interoperability, is key. Moreover, a solution with many different terminals at the cashier counter is not practical for customers or shops. Also for mobile payments, it is clear that standardisation and common solutions is the only viable path. Our aim is for mobile payments to be cheap and fast, and that apps can communicate and use the same shop payment terminal. The question is how to achieve that.