The global financial system is at a critical inflection point. Legacy infrastructure, some of it dating back over 50 years, cannot keep pace with the speed, scale, and inclusivity that today’s digital economy demands. For context, cross-border payments still take 2-3 days, while $5 trillion in daily FX volume flows through fragmented systems prone to settlement risk. The global average cost of sending $200 internationally is approximately 6.25% as of Q1 2023. Simply put, that means if someone sends $200 internationally, they will typically pay around $12.50 in fees on average (6.25% of $200) just to complete that transaction. This fee is especially burdensome for people making small remittances, such as migrant workers sending money to families back home or small business owners supplying globally. Losing $12.50 on every $200 sent is significant.
As digital assets, real-time payments, and programmable money rapidly reshape the financial landscape, one question looms:
What infrastructure will power this transformation?
A groundbreaking vision is taking shape, enabled by digital ledger technology (DLT) and blockchain.
BIS Report: A Financial System That Works Like the Internet
In recent times, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has shown keen interest in the tokenization of value assets, and in the Joint report by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) in October 2024 they spoke of the need for generating and recording a digital representation of traditional assets on a programmable platform.
Many industry leaders, legacy holders and top fintech innovators seem in agreement and have outlined a bold future for finance: a globally interoperable system functioning as seamlessly as the internet, built on tokenization, unified ledgers, and cross-border interoperability.
Among them are prominent business leaders like Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys and architect of India’s Aadhaar and UPI systems, who has championed the vision for “an internet of value” where money and assets can move globally as easily as information does today. Agustín Carstens, General Manager at BIS, has emphasized the need for a “unified financial infrastructure” that leverages digital ledger technology to enable seamless, instant, and secure global transactions.
This future, termed the Finternet, envisions a world where:
- Value assets of any kind, from currencies to bonds to real-world assets, can be tokenized, exchanged, and verified instantly on secure digital ledgers.
- Financial networks across countries interoperate effortlessly, slashing costs and eliminating friction.
- Individuals and businesses, from New York to Nairobi, are placed at the center of a more accessible, inclusive, and efficient financial system.
According to BCG, the tokenization of global illiquid assets could unlock a $16 trillion market by 2030.
But to make this real, we need infrastructure that transcends borders, traditional institutions, and legacy systems.
Infrastructure for the Financial Internet and Why Horizontal Scalability Matters
To realize the vision of Finternet, we need more than incremental improvements to existing systems—we need infrastructure that can scale globally, operate in real-time, and support the tokenization of trillions in value asset classes across diverse jurisdictions.
This would require horizontally scalable blockchain infrastructure; systems that can grow by adding capacity across multiple chains and networks, and not just vertically stacking transactions onto a single ledger. Horizontal scalability ensures:
- Global throughput: As more financial institutions, businesses, and individuals onboard, the infrastructure can handle exponentially more transactions without bottlenecks.
- Interoperability: Financial ecosystems, traditional and digital, can connect and verify transactions across borders and ledgers.
- Security and trust: Using technologies like zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, transactions can be verified globally without relying on centralized intermediaries.
This kind of infrastructure is essential for high-throughput financial use cases, such as instant cross-border payments, tokenized bond markets, identity verification, and real-time credit for SMEs, where millions of transactions need to be processed securely and with minimal latency.
Avail Nexus is a horizontally scalable infrastructure designed to enable seamless verification, interoperability, and settlement across global financial networks. It introduces a shared, trustless interoperability layer that could help streamline cross-network settlement, reduce friction from centralized intermediaries, and enable real-time, programmable finance.
As Anurag Arjun, Founder and CEO of Avail, notes:
“Finance is becoming digital, real-time, and borderless. To support tokenization at a global scale, we need horizontally scalable infrastructure—systems that can expand capacity seamlessly as demand grows, without compromising on speed, security, or interoperability.”
On a population level, what this technology truly unlocks here is potentially the ability to process millions of transactions across borders instantly, connect fragmented markets, and build a unified foundation for a frictionless financial internet.
This is the infrastructure for tokenization at scale, an infrastructure that can deliver financial inclusion and efficiency globally.
Welcome to the future of finance.
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