Current work
The 2017 Closed-Loop Currency filing described rule sets binding multiple stored-value sources into a single transaction, resolved by hierarchy when they conflicted. The infrastructure to actually do that — mobile secure elements, software-defined POS, real-time rails, stablecoin settlement, agentic payments — only arrived in the last five years.
This is what I've been building on those rails. Seven work areas, each grounded in the same underlying primitive: a programmable wallet that can carry multiple sources of value across multiple rails, with the rules — not the tender — as the product.
01 · Hardware-trust credentials
Payment, access, and identity credentials written directly into the Apple Secure Element via a Trusted Service Manager. The device becomes the tamper-resistant authenticator — not a screen showing a number.
02 · Software-defined point of sale
Contactless acceptance on commercial off-the-shelf devices, MPOC-certified (PCI's Mobile Payments on COTS standard) so the merchant-side hardware stops being a bottleneck. Tap-to-pay at every counter, every popup, every field technician's hand.
03 · Closed-loop on open-loop rails
The 2017 filing described rule sets binding multiple stored-value sources into one transaction. In 2026 the stored-value sources are gift balances, loyalty points, branded wallets, employer perks, and stablecoin holdings — and the rails they ride on are Visa, Mastercard, FedNow, and ACH. A closed-loop program delivers the brand experience; an open-loop transaction delivers the economics.
04 · Loyalty exchange
Loyalty programs have been accounting liabilities trapped inside one brand for forty years. A cross-brand exchange turns them into a real currency — earn at one property, spend at another, transfer at a rate the group controls. For multi-brand portfolios this collapses four loyalty systems into one ledger.
05 · Treasury-as-a-Service
When a portfolio of brands operates a shared wallet ecosystem, the float — unspent balances, pending settlements, inter-company transfers — becomes large enough to manage as treasury. Treasury-as-a-Service exposes that float as yield, liquidity, and working capital for the operating businesses.
06 · Open-loop transit & inclusion
Transit agencies are migrating from proprietary fare media to open-loop acceptance — riders tap the card or phone already in their pocket. That shift is the largest unbanked-inclusion mechanism in a generation: every prepaid card, every phone with a payment credential, becomes a transit pass.
07 · Stablecoin and agentic payments
USDC, PYUSD, RLUSD, and EURC finally give dollar-denominated programmable value deterministic execution and sub-second finality. The Agentic Commerce Protocol and x402 payment-required HTTP let software agents be parties to a transaction. The rule-set primitive from the 2017 patent maps directly to smart-contract templates gating multi-party value exchange.
Composition explorer
Pick a scenario — retail portfolio, transit agency, healthcare provider, agentic procurement, Innovation Credits infrastructure — and see which surfaces form the minimum viable composition, and what role each one plays.
Pick a use case
Scenario
A holding company operating four retail brands wants to unify loyalty across the portfolio, accept contactless at every surface, and extract yield from the combined float. Point redemption should feel native inside each brand's wallet and settle cleanly across brands.
Which surfaces compose
Hardware-trust credentials
Role in this scenario
Branded wallet credentials provisioned into SE
Software-defined point of sale
Role in this scenario
Contactless acceptance at every counter, MPOC certified
Closed-loop on open-loop
Role in this scenario
Branded wallet funded from points + card + gift balance
Loyalty exchange
Role in this scenario
Inter-brand point conversion with configurable FX
Treasury-as-a-service
Role in this scenario
Pooled float across brands, sweep rules on idle balance
Open-loop transit & inclusion
Any card, any phone, through the turnstile. Largest unbanked-inclusion mechanism of a generation.
Stablecoin & agentic payments
Programmable dollar rails with sub-second finality, plus agent-callable MCP / ACP payment tools.
Surfaces not highlighted are still available for the scenario — they're just not in the minimum viable composition. Most real deployments pull in two or three additional surfaces over time as the use case deepens.
Throughline
In 2017 the patent said it plainly: a closed-loop value exchange is defined by rule sets that associate two or more unique identifiers with a transaction, with a hierarchy to resolve conflicts. In 2026 that's the bet the entire programmable-money industry is making. The tenders change — gift balance, loyalty point, corporate card, stablecoin, agent-initiated payment — but the primitive doesn't. Figure out the rules, and the rest composes.