Far too late for the FSB's opposition to be credible, as they have participated in untold FCA/Payment Systems Regulator processes promoting digital payments as well as the Bank of England CBDC Engagement Forum, all advancing the case for a cashless society. They never uttered so much as a whisper of dissent. In doing so they in effect co-opted their membership into a direction-of-travel they now take issue with - too late, no credibility, go home.
08 Feb 2024 17:04 Read comment
Now we know why Jeremy Hunt's pension reforms will compel 5% of discretionary funds to be invested in 'high-growth' (in English 'high-risk') companies. Having bent the law to allow Silicon Valley Bank UK to be purchased within the HSBC ringfence and thus offer protection to this sector, the UK authorities have belatedly realised that they have not cured the problem but postponed its denouement. Where the markets do not work to confirm a pre-baked intention, find some stuffee...in this case a pension saver who has not made a specific election of where their money should be placed.
17 Jul 2023 10:51 Read comment
It's the 2017 Payment Services Regulations, of course. Apologies for the typo.
05 Jul 2023 11:10 Read comment
His Lordship reminds me of a Paul Whitehouse character from The Fast Show, the one for whom everything is brilliant. When he goes on holiday it’s ‘Flooding – yeah! Forest fire – brilliant! Tornado – fantastic!’, regardless of any damage done or of contradictions.
‘Fintech – yeah! Open Banking – brilliant! Crypto – fantastic!’.
His Lordship having been a major cheerleader for this stuff, it sits ill that His Lordship should overlook its detriments and also complain about access to cash, the inevitable victim of the developments he has championed. That is contradictory. Whilst cash is in reality a facilitator of financial inclusion, His Lordship infers that only digital products serve that objective.
Anyway, it must be obvious – and particularly to one who walks the corridors of power - that the government has done a deal with the banks: the banks must make their IT systems ready for the digital age and, to meet the cost, they are allowed to slash their branch and ATM networks.
The Bill's outcome will be to crystallize the environment for the resulting take-over by digital. His Lordship has helped to lay the groundwork for this outcome by cheerleading for digital; now the rest of us will be compelled to bear the consequences. Yeah! Fantastic! Brilliant!
19 Jan 2023 13:58 Read comment
This is a disgrace and probably the end of the neo-bank sector in the UK. It is an affront to decent hardworking families. I wonder how the losses compare to the income tax and national insurance paid over by the workforce at an employer like the steelworks in Consett Count Durham for its entire existence - up in smoke!
09 Dec 2022 18:07 Read comment
We can add another 6 months to that timeline: the TARGET2 migration has been delayed again.
20 Oct 2022 18:46 Read comment
I had that too, at a meeting at an IBOS bank in about 2004, where we were discussing how to enhance IBOS' intraday reporting service, to which the answer was 'why would we invest in MT942 when XML is just around the corner?' Exact same words - and a very long corner.
13 Oct 2022 13:43 Read comment
Yes indeed, Ketharaman, I have invested in a stainless steel dustbin to sit in during the implementation period.
12 Oct 2022 11:11 Read comment
The PSR's latest non-remedies in PS22/2, issued on 6th October, deserve this lawsuit as a rejoinder. In my experience of microenterprises the deductions-from-face-value are 3-8%, and well above that for small sales upon which a minimum of 30-50p is levied.
09 Oct 2022 14:55 Read comment
This strikes me as a considerable piece of disinformation, and a much less impressive result than the PSR would like us to believe.
The Decision Notice states neither the total monetary amount of the purchases from merchants made on these cards to which the over-deduction of Interchange Fees relates, nor the over-deduction, nor the original, total deduction.
Only the over-deduction will have been reimbursed to the merchants, leaving the larger, residual deduction unreimbursed. A complete view would furnish the relationship of the over-deduction with both the residual deduction and the total monetary amount.
As it was the intention of the Interchange Fee Regulation that the Interchange Fee be the only deduction experienced by merchants, we will then be able to appreciate the extent of the failure of the PSR and the other UK authorities to properly interpret and implement the Regulation, and allow the payment cards ecosystem to continue to trouser between 3-8% of face value on a fast-rising proportion of UK payments.
A fine of £1.8 million is peanuts compared to that, which points to the over-deduction being peanuts as well, and the total monetary amount being a drop-in-the-ocean of the amount paid by cards every day and subjected to fat deductions.
We would also like to see a statement of the PSR’s costs for this case, and see if their costs were higher than the fine and the reimbursed over-deduction.
20 May 2022 12:07 Read comment
Cristovao MatosConsultant at Novabase Business Solutions
Vaibhav KhandelwalConsultant at IBM
Somobrata BallabhConsultant at Capgemini Invent
Mahima GuptaConsultant at Thoughtworks
Rajendra JanvalekarConsultant at TCS
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