"Do Smart Contracts Really Guarantee Payment?
One benefit often touted of smart contracts is that they can automate payment without the need for dunning notices or other collection expenses and without the need to go to court to obtain a judgment mandating payment. While this is indeed true for simpler use cases, it may be less accurate in complex commercial relationships. The reality is that parties are constantly moving funds throughout their organization and do not “park” total amounts that are due on a long-term contract in anticipation of future payment requirements. Similarly, a person obtaining a loan is unlikely to keep the full loan amount in a specified wallet linked to the smart contract. Rather, the borrower will put those funds to use, funding the necessary repayments on an ad hoc basis.
If the party owing amounts under the smart contract fails to fund the wallet on a timely basis, a smart contract looking to transfer money from that wallet upon a trigger event may find that the requisite funds are not available. Implementing another layer into the process, such as having the smart contract seek to pull funds from other wallets or having that wallet “fund itself” from other sources, would not solve the problem if those wallets or sources of funds also lack the requisite payment amounts. The parties might seek to address this issue through a text-based requirement that a wallet linked to the smart contract always have a minimum amount, but that solution simply would give the party a stronger legal argument if the dispute was adjudicated. It would not render the payment operation of the smart contract wholly automatic. Thus, although smart contracts will render payments far more efficient, they may not eliminate the need to adjudicate payment disputes."
What if the smart contract tries to trigger payment in SWIFT/VISA/Mastercard/Bitcoin and the account does not have the funds?
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