America innovates, China replicates and Europe regulates I often find the maze of European regulations hard to follow and track. It’s ok if you’re tracking one – like that Payment Service Directives and Regulations – but when you’re trying to track many, it’s an ever changing cauldron. Right now, I’m trying to work out with…
Continuing the theme of payments in 2025 I really liked the view of McKinsey, who produced a really nice report to coincide with SIBOS last year. What did they say? In short “simpler interfaces, complex reality”. What does that mean? It means that “payments are becoming disconnected from accounts, and the number of players is proliferating,…
Building on my blog the other day about BLIK (the Polish digital wallet), I just got two really insightful pieces of analysis on European payments – talking of a payments vision – from PWC in a report on Europe’s open banking vision and Jeremy Light, a good friend formerly of Accenture, on EU wallets. Here’s the…
July 4 is always when my American friends give Britain the middle finger and proudly celebrate Paul Revere’s midnight ride that led to Independence Day on July 4, 1776. Great … but what about bank independence day? Most central banks, including the Federal Reserve, are independent of government control. Why and, more importantly, why is…
I recently stumbled across an update of eIDAS. Have you heard of it, eIDAS2? It’s all about our digital identities in the European Union. The first eIDAS – short for electronic Identification, Authentication, and trust Services – tried to sort out all the ways to recognise who you are online. That first version was implemented…
A friend of mine was inspired by my aggregation discussions last week* to ask ChatGPT what they would do about it. The discussion was so good that I feel I have to share it so, here it goes: Anonymous I am researching Financial product and fintech product solutions that provide do good, positive financial wellness…
I got into a new debate yesterday, talking with two guys who are formerly with big card companies (shush, you know who), and we started debating the four-pillar model that’s been around for the last half century. The model is the basis of the card industry and involves acquiring merchants, issuing cards through banks, and then…
I recently wrote a white paper for XBP Europe, which you can download (see later). It’s all about how to be fit for the future and digital transformation, my usual subjects. Just to give a taste of the paper, here’s a small extract: The obvious answer is to digitise the corporation. The harder question is:…
