This week, I’ll be attending the Sibos 2014 conference and hosting both a twitter chat and luncheon panel discussing digital currencies and their impact on transaction and commercial banks. With Bitcoin and other digital currencies in their infancy, there is still a lot to learn about the opportunities they can provide and how to determine the regulatory and reputational risks associated with them. Since digital currencies show no sign of going away, and continue to proliferate, at some point, banks will need to address them to meet customer demand. Is there an opportunity for banks to create their own digital currencies, and is now the time to do so to become a market leader? How should a bank respond if a major corporate client makes serious enquiries for digital currency banking services? Can typical banking services be applied to digital currencies in the same way as for $, £, € etc, or is a completely different approach required? With all of these questions abounding, we wanted to provide a forum where questions can be asked and explored with a group of experts in the field of digital currencies and innovation in banking.

We are excited that Jon Matonis (@JonMatonis), a widely respected expert on the future of money, transactions and currency and an advisor and Executive Director at the Bitcoin Foundation will be participating. Jon explains the often confusing world on digital currencies, how they work in the real world, and what the implications for banks, businesses and individuals could be. He analyses the regulations, strategies and risks inherent in so-called cryptographic payments (eg payments made ‘peer-to-peer’ rather than via intermediaries).

Brett King (@BrettKing), an internationally acknowledged expert in innovation and customer service within retail banking who was voted American Banker’s Innovator of the Year will be joining us to include his perspective on this disruptive force in banking, will also be participating and providing his insights.

We will be asking our panelist questions that are submitted here on the blog as well as via Twitter. So, please leave your comments below or use the hashtag #EverydayPayments on Twitter from now until the event on October 1st. The Twitter chat will take place online from 11-11:45am EST and the lunch panel is 12-1pm EST. If you are not attending the lunch panel, you can participate in the Twitter chat by following and using #EverydayPayments. During the lunch panel, we will be live Tweeting and getting your select questions to our panelists. Follow @BankingInsights and my personal Twitter account, @JeremyLight3, to participate.

While we encourage Twitter interaction for this event, we know that most questions can’t fully be answered in this format, so after the event, look for additional blog posts from us to follow-up on your questions.