Payments

As you walk the streets of Rome, you find modern and ancient intertwined. The streets are full of gorgeous clothes from designers ranging from Salvatore Ferragano to Versace, Louis Vuitton to Gucci, Prada to Armani. All the names are here in beautifully presented shops that ooze money. These shops are squeezed into streets laid with…

The Faster Payments project goes live today after over three years in the planning, $300 million investment in new systems and some delay – it was meant to go live in November but required such significant systems redevelopment that it took six months longer. It should be good for all, as it means D+0 is…

The European Commission is running a conference this week about financial inclusion and the unbanked. According to the Commission, almost half of all of the citizens of the EU10 – Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia and other recent joiners, but not Bulgaria and Romania – have no bank account. According to their research, 47% of…

The SWIFT Annual Report came out last Friday (download it here, 3.4 Megabytes) and makes for some interesting reading, especially as I like numbers.  Yes, it does include lots of numbers: there are 8,332 institutions connected to SWIFT (note: institutions, not banks) across 208 countries and territories; over 3.5 billion FIN messages exchanged last year…

The SWIFT Annual Report came out last Friday (download it here, 3.4 Megabytes) and makes for some interesting reading, especially as I like numbers.  Yes, it does include lots of numbers: there are 8,332 institutions connected to SWIFT (note: institutions, not banks) across 208 countries and territories; over 3.5 billion FIN messages exchanged last year…

You may not have realised it, but today is Europe Day. In the UK, we took especial notice of Europe Day by not mentioning it in the news, not talking about it on TV, not referring to it on the radio and avoiding any reference to it in the newspapers. However, there are some things…

You may not have realised it, but today is Europe Day. In the UK, we took especial notice of Europe Day by not mentioning it in the news, not talking about it on TV, not referring to it on the radio and avoiding any reference to it in the newspapers. However, there are some things…

You may not have realised it, but today is Europe Day. In the UK, we took especial notice of Europe Day by not mentioning it in the news, not talking about it on TV, not referring to it on the radio and avoiding any reference to it in the newspapers. However, there are some things…

If payments is just transferring a file electronically between a sender and a recipient these days, why is it so darned complicated? Bearing in mind, the internet connects everyone and everything electronically, how come we have so many disparate payments infrastructures? From retail to wholesale payments, clearing and settlement, we do have a bit of…

This was a comment I made during a panel at the ACT Conference in Edinburgh, where I joined esteemed speakers in a BBC Question Time style debate, chaired by Andrew Neil, the political journalist and writer. The other speakers on the panel were: Angela Knight CBE, CEO, British Bankers’ Association;  Robert Waugh, Head of UK…