Coordination Without a Centre. Control Where It Belongs.
Omnieon is building federated financial infrastructure: a way for banks, fintechs and regulators to work with one another, within and across jurisdictions, with no central party in control.
What makes it different is what it removes. No correspondent chains, clearing houses or third-party messaging networks in the middle. No need to replace a bank's existing systems. No loss of sovereignty: the participants in each jurisdiction control their own infrastructure, and no single company, Omnieon included, can cut anyone off.
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Customers verify their identity once and reach financial services worldwide, in fiat and digital assets. Institutions gain reach across borders without licensing in every market. Regulators receive real-time reporting built into every transaction.
Finance Runs on Two Models. Each Solves Only Part of the Problem.
Institutional Finance
Trusted, regulated, accountable. And slow to connect.Money moves through chains of correspondent banks, clearing houses and messaging networks, each a separate dependency with its own cost and delay. Every new relationship is a bilateral integration. Every new border is a new licence. Core banking systems were never built for open interoperability.
Decentralized Finance
Fast, programmable, open. And outside the system.It shows what interoperable financial networks make possible, but operates largely outside the regulation, accountability and institutional trust that most of the world's money depends on.
Fintechs
Caught between the two, dependent on a fragile middle layer.Most reach the financial system through a few bank partners, often via middleware or banking-as-a-service providers: the same dependencies in a newer wrapper. When that layer fails, customers pay.
The 2024 collapse of Synapse, a banking-as-a-service intermediary, left customers locked out of their funds for months while records across banks and fintechs could not be reconciled. That was not one company's failure. It was structural: coordination depended on a private intermediary no one could see into and no one could replace.
Evolution, not revolution. Separate control from coordination.
Federated finance is the next step for both institutional and decentralized finance. It lets the two coexist, for fiat currency and digital assets alike, delivering the strengths of each while addressing the limitations of each.
Control stays local. Each institution governs its own customers, systems and data. Each regulator keeps full authority over its jurisdiction.
Coordination becomes infrastructure. Not one system the whole world must join: a jurisdiction can run its own federated infrastructure and connect it to others wherever its participants choose.
Every Participant Gains Something It Could Not Secure Alone.
End users
Verify once, use everywhere. With their authorization, one identity verification opens financial products and services worldwide, at lower cost.
Fintechs
Banking partners around the world, with regulatory requirements addressed by the infrastructure, and no dependence on middleware or a single bank.
Every bank
New reach without rebuilding core systems. Any bank can act as a correspondent to any other, at its choice, with no chains or clearing houses in between.
Small & mid-sized banks
New customer channels, products, liquidity relationships and partnerships that would be very difficult to secure on their own.
Large banks
Entry into new jurisdictions and greater market share, and the ability to serve smaller institutions they do not typically reach.
Regulators
Accurate, real-time reporting and a lower audit burden, because requirements are embedded in execution, with full authority over their jurisdiction.
Governments
Greater financial sovereignty and more options in how they trade, use their currency and work with other countries, without relying on any third party's network.
Investors
A licensing-led model that creates value with as few as two institutions in one jurisdiction, and compounds as the network grows.
Nine Tensions, Resolved Together.
Coordinated financial infrastructure has been attempted many times. It stalls because the requirements pull in opposite directions. Omnieon's architecture delivers both sides of each pair at once.
01Cross-border reach, home licensingServe customers in other jurisdictions without a licence in each, while every jurisdiction's rules are respected.
A regulated institution can serve customers in other jurisdictions without obtaining a licence in each customer's jurisdiction, while every jurisdiction's rules continue to be respected.
02Regulated services, no fintech licenceFintechs deliver the full spectrum of services without a licence of their own, inside a fully regulated framework.
A fintech can deliver the full spectrum of financial services, in fiat and crypto, at home and across borders, without holding any financial-services licence of its own, while everything it offers operates inside a fully regulated framework.
03Verify once, comply everywhereOne KYC, passported with consent, while every institution meets its obligations and data stays where residency rules require.
KYC is conducted once, in the customer's home jurisdiction, and can be passported to other jurisdictions with the customer's authorization, while every institution still meets its own KYC obligations. Personal data stays resident where rules require, and moves or is replicated only when a service requires it and the receiving institution's policies and regulations allow. The record is continuously strengthened through feedback rather than resting on a one-time onboarding event.
04Settlement without a centreReal-time finality within and across borders, with no clearing house netting the transactions.
Institutions settle with each other, within and across borders, with real-time finality and no clearing house netting their transactions. The infrastructure performs the clearing, and the governance allows liquidity to be distributed across the network without reducing any institution's liquidity.
05Compliance at the speed of the transactionReal-time execution, with every jurisdiction's rules and reporting applied at the moment it happens.
Transactions execute in real time, while the regulatory rules, institutional permissions and reporting requirements of every jurisdiction involved are applied as part of execution rather than reconstructed after the fact.
06One onboarding, worldwide accessOnboard once and reach institutions anywhere, while each decides whom it serves and on what terms.
A customer onboards once and, subject to permissions and eligibility, can reach fiat and digital-asset products and services from participating institutions anywhere in the world, while each institution continues to decide whom it serves, what it offers and on what terms.
07Shared benefits, aligned economicsEvery stakeholder better off, no one's gain at another's expense, and no gatekeeper controlling access.
Users gain access and portability. Institutions gain reach, efficiency, products and revenue. Regulators gain visibility and enforceability. Governments retain sovereignty while improving connectivity. Technology partners gain regulated infrastructure to build on. Omnieon participates through its intellectual property, technology and network services, and investors share in the value created as adoption grows.
08No one can cut anyone offIt keeps operating even if Omnieon is barred or gone. Only an institution's own regulator can restrict it.
The technology and its governance keep operating and evolving in every jurisdiction, even if Omnieon is barred from one, changes ownership or ceases to exist. No jurisdiction or institution can be cut off by the failure or exclusion of a single company. The only authority that can restrict an institution is its own regulator.
09Alongside, not insteadRuns beside existing systems. Nothing has to be replaced, and each institution chooses its own pace.
The federated infrastructure runs alongside each institution's existing systems, with limited to no integration, while institutions and jurisdictions keep full control of their own systems and data. Each institution decides how far and how quickly to move activity onto it, for stronger security and wider reach.
The Federated Infrastructure Stack.
Four layers, each built on the one beneath it, with Trust as the foundation. Each layer is a suite of products and services, not a single system.
Distribution
Layer 4How products and services are discovered, accessed and delivered through participating institutions, fintechs and partners.
Marketplaces · product discovery · eligibility · onboarding · pricing · embedded finance · APIs
Settlement
Layer 3How money moves. Final settlement in near real time, routed and rerouted among institutions that have chosen to work together. No single pathway.
Routing · liquidity management · reconciliation · treasury · foreign exchange
Coordination
Layer 2How data moves. A protocol for finance, much as TCP/IP is for the internet, so every institution's records update at the same moment.
Messaging · permissions · regulatory approvals · rules · reporting · core records
Trust
Layer 1 · FoundationWho participants are. KYC and KYB that every institution can trust, kept current by continuous feedback loops rather than a one-time check.
Identity & business verification · consent · monitoring · fraud detection · early warnings · auditing
Controlled by each jurisdiction
The whole ecosystem is available to each jurisdiction, or to any group of institutions within one, and is controlled by the participants there. Omnieon can provide the technology, standards and operating support under their authority.
Independent of Omnieon
The system is designed to keep operating, and to receive updates through the network rather than from Omnieon, even without Omnieon's participation. The intent: every jurisdiction keeps full sovereignty over its financial matters while being bridged to every institution that is permitted and willing to work with it.
Alongside, not instead
The stack runs alongside each institution's existing systems, with limited to no integration. Nothing has to be replaced, and institutions and jurisdictions keep full control of their own systems and data. Each institution decides how far and how quickly to move activity onto the federated infrastructure, for stronger security and wider reach.
It Began With a Problem of Our Own.
In 2024, our fintech, LavaPay, lost its banking partner during a sector-wide pullback. No replacement was available on reasonable terms, and the banking-as-a-service platforms on offer carried the same dependencies beneath a modern wrapper. So we initially set out to acquire a bank to solve our immediate problem.
In that process, and in conversations with fintechs, banks and institutions across Europe, Asia and South America, it became clear the problem was structural, and multidimensional: regulators, institutions and the financial system as a whole each faced their own version of it.
So rather than solve it for one bank, we chose to solve it for all of them, and then for the infrastructure as a whole. Over two years and nine design iterations, across both the business model and the technology architecture, we tested the design against the scenarios regulators, institutions and technology providers would each bring to it, revising until the pieces worked as one system.
The Architecture Is Complete. Institutional Proof Is Next.
- Phase 1
Architectural design
Documented in the Omnieon Blueprint: four-layer technology roadmap, business roadmap and high-level regulatory design.
Complete - Phase 2
Institutional proof
Complete the detailed engineering design and prove the model with participating institutions in a bounded jurisdiction.
Next - Phase 3
Operational proof
Prove the infrastructure, products, governance and economics in live operation.
- Phase 4
Globalization
Extend the network across institutions and jurisdictions while preserving local control.
Our paths forward
- 1License the intellectual property to governments, institutions, infrastructure providers or technology partners able to implement it, with our support, extending the network with each implementation.
- 2Sell the intellectual property to an organization with the capital, technology, regulatory relationships and strategic reason to take it forward.
- 3Build it ourselves, raising capital to take Omnieon through detailed engineering and institutional proof directly.
The paths are not mutually exclusive. Our current focus is the first two.
Next in the design
- →Detailed engineering: protocols, data models, APIs, security, integration and the products within each layer.
- →An AI layer embedded across every part of the technology.
- →Federated development of the technology itself, so it evolves through its participants without depending on Omnieon.
If You See the Same Opportunity, Let's Talk.
- Governments & regulatorsFinance ministries and regulators weighing infrastructure, sovereignty and cross-border interoperability.
- Financial institutionsSeeking greater efficiency, security, product breadth and reach.
- Infrastructure companiesBlockchain, payments and infrastructure firms looking for a bridge into regulated finance.
- Big tech & consumer platformsCompanies that want to deliver financial services to their customers.
- Investors & strategic partnersAble to help move the architecture through engineering, proof and commercialization.
Write to mike.nabavi@omnieon.com. A detailed briefing is available under NDA.
Why Omnieon is on this site
Omnieon is the long-term vision of Nabavi's founder, Mike Nabavi. For anyone interested in Omnieon, this is an overview of the business and where it is going. For Nabavi's clients, it shows the breadth and depth we bring to every engagement: finding the root cause rather than the symptom, designing for every stakeholder who has to say yes, resolving tensions across business and technology, and testing the design against reality before building it.