Programmable money isn't new, we've had it for ages

I often hear that modern money just isn't up to snuff because it isn't programmable. That's why we need Ethereum, stablecoins, and other exotica like central bank digital currencies. These platforms will provide the world with much needed programmability.

Stablecoin issuer Circle is one of the bigger marketers of this idea, but it's far from being the only one: 

"While value exchange may be the initial killer app, it’s the programmability of digital money that will ultimately usher in business model breakthroughs." [link]

I disagree. We've had programmable money for ages. Let me offer a quick guide.

Microsoft doesn't have a bunch of employees who sit at desks and manually sign paper checks all day. No, it uses software that automates payments to its tens of thousands of suppliers, employees, contractors, investors, and the tax authorities. Every day this software relays payment instructions to the Federal Reserve's clearing house for processing. The Fed doesn't rely on physical labour either. FedACH, as it is known, is an automated clearing house. It uses software to automatically clear all incoming payments.

Fred Wilson thinks programmable digital money is a big deal https://t.co/4DJRAVBDEH

I mean, we've had programmable digital money for decades. The A in ACH payment stands for automated. Just program in the date & amount, recurring or not, and voila. pic.twitter.com/W5ouXlZDqT

— John Paul Koning (@jp_koning) February 11, 2020

By the way, ACH go back to the 1970s. If Microsoft's software-based payments and FedACH aren't programmability, I don't know what is.

Another example of programmable money is the recent Korean COVID-19 stimulus payments. Koreans had the choice to receive either a prepaid debit card, credit card points, or gift cards. Since the idea was to help local businesses, the prepaid cards and card points were programmed with certain limitations. To begin with, the funds expired by August 2020 in order to discourage hoarding. Secondly, money could only be spent at qualifying shops. That meant no online shopping, no purchases at large-scale supermarkets or entertainment places, and the money had to be spent in the district where the recipient lived.

I like how Korea paid out its COVID relief.

Koreans received either a prepaid card, card points(!), or gift cards. The advantage: programmability. Funds expire by August and can only be be spent at a qualifying shops. No Robinhood/bitcoin speculation! https://t.co/pseJaaIIvy pic.twitter.com/wxcLggV6Sj

— John Paul Koning (@jp_koning) July 23, 2020

Programming COVID relief didn't require anything fancy like Ethereum or stablecoins. The card networks make it easy to do this sort of thing.

We scan see another example of card programmability in Australia with its controversial cashless welfare card (or "Indue" card), currently in pilot mode. Once government benefits are deposited onto the Indue Visa debit card, the money is "quarantined" such that it can't be withdrawn as cash from automatic teller machines or used to shop at merchants that sell restricted items like alcohol, tobacco or gambling products. The idea, presumably, is that low-income people can’t control their spending, and thus their money has to be programmed to overcome their shortcomings.

Source: The Gaurdian

Again, this didn’t require Ethereum or stablecoins or a Australian digital currency.

Automated escrow is another example of programmable money. Using Ethereum’s programming language, Solidity, one can create an escrow contract that locks up some Ether until certain conditions are met and a payout is made. But Ethereum isn't the only platform that can do automated escrow. Escrow.com, for instance, lets users code up escrow arrangements using its application programming interfaces, or APIs. Escrow.com stores the dollars and then automatically pays out once an event has been triggered, say a used car inspection has been passed. 

No fancy blockchains here.

Speaking of APIs, the Europeans are probably the leaders in bank account programmability. Thanks to the Second Payment Services Directive, or PSD2, European banks are now obligated to grant fintechs access to customer accounts via APIs. (Some people refer to this as “Open Banking.”)  This provides fintechs not only with the ability to peer into what those bank accounts hold, but also the ability to program those accounts to make transfers and such. And thus they can provide the public with new financial tools, built on top of banks.

Monzo, a UK-based digital bank, provides a taste of what this sort of programmability might offer. In 2018, it introduced functionality that allowed its customers to connect their bank account to a range of other web services and create automated rules or ‘recipes’. Such recipes could allow customers to use data from, say, a weather application to trigger a change in their Monzo account, say to move money to a savings pot.

Programmable money, the non-bitcoin/blockchain version.

This paper analyzes the automated rules created by the users of Monzo, a mobile-only bank. i.e. "If I spend money at Domino’s Pizza, McDonalds, KFC or the local pub, then move £5 to my penalty pot." https://t.co/nXrIlqiAvP pic.twitter.com/7kCVIXs62T

— John Paul Koning (@jp_koning) April 21, 2019

Even my plain vanilla Canadian bank account grants me some basic programmability. I can set up my Tangerine bank account to pull money from my Royal Bank account, and choose how often this will happen (daily, weekly, monthly), and select how long these periodic transfers are to last. Sure, it's limited. There are no if-than statements. But most regular folks probably don't require much programmability. And banks may not be too keen to provide it to us anyways. We'd probably mess it up, and then they'd have to spend time and money cleaning up our mistakes.

So to repeat, programmability is already here. Has been for a while.

If anything, public blockchains like Ethereum offer a different sort of programmability. Rather than the code being hosted by a commercial or government entity, it is hosted on a neutral, decentralized platform. 

There is a niche for this sort of programmability. Jack may not trust the automation provided by a payments company or a central bank utility. He could be cut off, say because they deem him to be a risky customer, or maybe because he is doing illegal things. But Ethereum isn’t controlled by anyone, so Jack can be sure that the automation provided by Ethereum won’t suddenly stop.

---

P.S.: Antony Lewis has also been thinking on this topic. Head on over.