Why does a compliant stablecoin transfer still require guessing my counterparty's protocol?

FATF Recommendation 16 requires VASPs to exchange originator and beneficiary data before a qualifying stablecoin transfer settles, but three incompatible protocols carry this data in practice: TRISA, TRP, and OpenVASP. Each nominally uses the IVMS101 data standard but with different trust models, inconsistent treatment of optional fields, and distinct message validation rules. A VASP initiating a cross-border USDC payment must first discover which protocol its counterparty supports, yet there is no universal discovery registry or real-time protocol negotiation layer running at scale. The FATF June 2025 Targeted Update found that serious VASPs now have to support more than one protocol because counterparties do not all speak the same one, and the FSB has flagged VASP discovery fragmentation as a key remaining infrastructure gap.