#16 HSBC's Thomas Halpin is using 200 digital transformation initiatives to eliminate clients' pain

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It shouldn't be lost on those working to make digital payments commonplace that there are still guys like Thomas Halpin around. Halpin, head of North America global payments solutions for HSBC , remembers when payments were mainly manual and paper based. As technology moved deeper into the space, the goal back then was just to make things faster.

Now Halpin is overseeing an near-instantaneous digital system developed by HSBC that allows payments initiated on a blockchain to be sent to anyone with a bank account. It's called HDSU and is basically a permissioned-blockchain framework that connects the digital rails that move cryptocurrency to the TradFi banking settlement system that handles dollars, euro and yen.

"The legacy way of doing payments was very sequential. It did A then it went to B and then it went to C then it went to D, and every party along the chain got information," Halpin said. Blockchain typically removes almost all middle-men from a transaction, making it faster and more secure. "The great ideas that people have had, such as blockchain and AI," are now at "a pace to do some creative things and businesses are at a place where they're using the technology," Halpin said.

About 750 people report to Halpin at HSBC, where he's been for 19 years. In 2025, Global Payments Solutions "launched over 200 digital transformation initiatives worldwide, spanning major projects and pilot programs," according to the bank. Halpin devotes about a third of his time to innovation projects; 70 percent of the technology budget is slated for digital transformation initiatives.

Blockchain adoption among financial firms has been slow in part because it wasn't offering uses that fit what banks want or need to help customers. That's changed now, Halpin said, while there's also greater trust in the technology itself. Benefits of blockchain include speed, transparency, security, and bigger data loads, Halpin said.

Besides the roll-out of HDSU, the bank entered partnerships with Stripe, Plaid and credit card firms Plastic, Boost and Extend last year. Halpin stresses that HDSU isn't another stablecoin project; it's using traditional banking rails to settle digital payments in fiat currency.

Halpin said customers are always the driving force, and cited the analogy from Tony Fadell's book Build that clients want painkillers before they want vitamins; as in, eliminate frictions first.

"It's a very good use of a technology that creates the security, the transparency and the speed [clients] are looking for," Halpin said.