Every settlement mechanism today, apart from physical cash involves messaging followed by reconciliation. This is slow, expensive, and unreliable. SWIFT, VISA, RTGS, ACH etc, are all based on accounts and technology invented over 30 years ago.

Token-based settlement is different. It is like cash in that payment equals settlement. There are no intermediaries, settlement is instantaneous with close to zero friction.

Alphabill is the first public blockchain that replicates the properties of physical cash- there are no accounts, only assets and value never moves, only ownership of assets changes.

This enables us to use Alpahbill to register financial assets (digital cash, equities, fixed income) etc. with atomic settlement between assets occurring on-chain, in real-time and with extremely low friction.

Take a simple example of a corporate bond. Today that bond exists as an entry in a bank database. The bank has processes run by compliance, operations, security, and audit departments dedicated to protecting the integrity of the information and processes around actions related to the bond (coupon payments, changes in ownership, etc.) An estimated 30% of a bank's operating costs go into ensuring information and processes are correct. Tokenizing the asset provides better security, better transparency, faster settlement, and much more cost-effective operations.