Transaction-Free Trade (TfT) … there are no borders in the internet cloud.

“What do you mean transaction-free ?” ... “Transaction and trade are practically synonyms ... the one cannot exist without the other can it ?... and what is wrong with transactions any way?”
All fair comments that I've heard endless times over the last 35 months.
I will start from the last point. There are 43 trillion reasons why we need to get rid of transactions. That much is the cost in USD PER YEAR that businesses around the globe incur - if one counts both the external and internal cost - in order to transact through the existing legacy systems.

A single B2B cross border transaction requires today at best 13 actors which share between them 108 interactions and takes on average 43 hours to be completed.
Who do you think is paying the 11 “mediators” of every single transaction, your customer? Think again. YOU ARE THE CUSTOMER. Not just of one business but of all business in the supply chain before you !
And you are not paying it just once either. Transaction cost is basically overhead that every business will add to its basic cost before it calculates its margin ! If there are 4 businesses before you in your supply chain and they are working with a 20% margin than you paid 1.2^4 = 2.07 times more and if there are six then 1.2^6= 2.98 than you actually ought to !
If that was not enough, businesses are rarely paid in less than 45 days from their customers. These delays result 9/10 times in problematic cash-flows and additional overhead cost due to borrowing & trade insurance. Once more it is you who is paying the cost which based on same as above formula is most definitely higher than it should be.
Finally, In addition to support all these interactions businesses employ whole armies of accountants, financiers, administrators...lawyers and debt collectors and in order to reduce their operational cost additional armies of consultants. And who is paying the price for this overhead cost? Well, you guessed it. YOUR BUSINESS DOES.
It is no surprise that global profit margins have shrunk to just 11%.


Now lets take transactions out of the equation. Let's assume for a moment that there is a better way to trade - one without transactions. Do any of the above costs will still apply? NO.
Would it not be great consequently if we could get rid of transactions altogether? YES

Well, there are good news for all of us. Now it is possible.
And this brings us to the second point: if trade and transaction are indeed synonyms and if the one can exist without the other and the answer is emphatically NOT.

The invention of Two Dimensional Virtual Vertical Integration - or 2DVVI for short – a new techno-methodology that has not reached yet mainstream literature hence you are probably unaware of - makes the impossible possible.
Its principle is dead simple as all great ideas. If the businesses belonging to any supply chain were to merge into one, then of course all transaction between them, trade credit risk, late payments etc. will cease to exist. Expand the principle universally and there would be no need for Banks, SWIFT, Insurers, Payment Processors...etc. Terms late payments, credit lines, factoring, trade credit insurance, leasing etc. will be abandoned from our daily vocabulary.
With merging all businesses across all supply chains on the globe an improbability 2DVVI does the best next thing.
It allows the virtual integration of these businesses (through the use of APIs) transforming this way every supply chain into an ecosystem that now trades as one entity !

Distribution of cost, risk and receivables within these ecosystems are now assigned to intelligent algorithms which are managed by Learning Systems (AI modules). The whole process happens within Blockchain ledgers, is fully automated and carries no counterparty risk. No human hand or mediator (except the owners of the platform where 2DVVI is running) gets involved.

2DVVI allows for the gradual integration of businesses into these ecosystems. From the moment two businesses decide to utilise its facilities an ecosystem seed is created and economies of scale start to appear.
With every new member joining the ecosystem economies of scale increase exponentially for all.
But 2DVVI does not stop there. Every new ecosystem that is created until it expands all the way upstream to its suppliers and downstream to its customers will still need to trade. So on top of the FINTECH modules designed to address the internal value and risk distribution needs of the ecosystem there is the need for these ecosystems to keep on trading. New innovative and low cost forms of value exchanges needed to be developed for that reason. Liquid Payments, new forms of Cashless & Cardless Payments, Mobile Payment systems, new forms of Trade-credit-insurance, of currency contracts (futures), new forms of bi-Directional Cards, FX trade etc. had to be developed and so its designers did.

The end result has profound financial, institutional and social impact.
Within these ecosystems the economies of scale reach extraordinary heights with Cash-flow increases exceeding 350%, Trade Risk reduction reaching 93%, FX cost reduction reaching 75% and Operational cost reduction reaching 98%. That is Lean Engineering at its best and with it the dream of an overhead-free production process approaching fulfilment.
Externally the trading cost of these ecosystems is reduced following similar trends with FX costs reduced by up to 33%, Trade credit risk by 50%, Trade credit insurance by a factor of 23! and FX Futures by a factor of 18!

However, the most important now is that all these external costs ARE DIVIDED AND SHARED by all participating in the ecosystem businesses. For example if a 5 businesses deep supply chain becomes an ecosystem which is trading downstream with consumers, card payment processing cost that was on average ~ 2.2% will now be 0.44% for each (assuming all of them contributing to the same extend in the products value creation). The same stands true for all other cost parameters with trade-credit-insurance cost able to drop to as low as 1/1000 of today's costs and currency contracts cost to below 1/500 !

The institutional shift will be even more dramatic. The rules of Taxation, Banking, International Trade and Trade Credit insurance will need to be re-written. Values would be able to be expressed to anything from fiat currencies to digital ones and from commodities to derivatives. Savings would be able to be stored in all kind of things from information to manufacturing stocks and the notion of the Pension will be altered for ever. Business Ecosystems and Individuals will be able to become Market Makers trading anything and everything. Taxes and employment contributions can now be collected automatically and in real time. Businesses will be able to exist (virtually) in any number of countries they choose to, irrespectively of Trade Deals without the need for subsidiaries rendering events like Brexit irrelevant and pay taxes wherever they fill it is socially beneficial. The number of Banks and their role will diminish. States and Ecosystems will be able to create their own credit schemes. New forms of business partnerships, employment, leasing and PPIs will take shape. The boundaries between Businesses the State and the Citizens will be altered for ever.

Finally, the social will be positively impacted as well. Product prices will be reduced to below 50% of what is now, lifting 1.5 billion people above the poverty level. With the notion of cheap labour out of the equation thanks to the birth of the enterprise in the cloud all unnecessary transportation will gradually be reduced and with it the levels of pollution that impact climate change. Unemployment will become a thing of the past as the boundaries between the business ownership and employment will disappear. Salaries will keep on increasing as businesses will gradually increase their profitability and liquidity. Human effort will be migrated from trivial overhead duties into productive ones helping us to climb one step higher in Maslow's Pyramid of self-actualisation...