Published on 28 January 2019
Project Carlton has been conceived as a stock take of the efforts to reform the UK payments business since 2014 and to evaluate the case for a change in direction.
The reform efforts have been spearheaded by the Payment Systems Regulator and its creature the Payment Strategy Forum, involving a supporting cast […]
Published on 17 January 2019
The Daily Express issued a “shock horror” story on 30th December that the EU was in financial meltdown over the loss of the UK’s budget contributions.
This seems overstated.
They have no need to worry for a little while if they get their €40 billion “divorce settlement” – which will be used to […]
Published on 12 January 2019
The EU’s second Payment Services Directive, with live date January 2018, has had as a main objective to foster the emergence of non-bank intermediaries called Third Party Providers or “TPPs”.
The purposes of a TPP’s offering would be to:
Create a single view for the customer of the balances on payment accounts […]
Published on 6 January 2019
Financial markets have been seeing increased volatility lately, and one does not have to look as far as Bitcoin to see it:
Seasoned corporate bonds have suffered an extended rout;Financial regulators have raised concerns about “zombie” companies – those that can just afford their debt service at very low rates of interest, […]
Published on 28 December 2018
There is a lot of movement in the Trade Finance space around moving the business into the digital era. This blog is an overview of the most significant moving parts.
We have the International Chamber of Commerce process, in which a very large number of banks are involved. The ICC Banking Commission […]
Published on 11 December 2018
The last update we gave was that the sponsor of Project Carlton had signed off on the initial research and endorsed its sharing for validation with five or six interested parties.
We did that, got very favourable responses, and have then:
presented aspects of the research at industry events;
used the research […]
Published on 7 December 2018
The Bank of England recently woke up and issued its Financial Stability Report and Stress Test results – November 2018. In it the Bank warned that a “further deterioration in Italy’s financial outlook could result in material spillovers to the euro area and the UK” .
In its more detailed comments the […]
Published on 20 November 2018
“Request to Pay” or “RtP” is a new service planned for the UK by Pay.uk (formerly known as New Payment System Operator), and is likely to be adopted in some form within the Single Euro Payments Area as well.
The basic concept is that an invoice for regular utility supplies – like […]
Published on 19 November 2018
The EUObserver published an abridged version of our article that appeared earlier in “Lawyer Monthly”, about how the USA has had to apply mounting pressure on Cyprus to interdict the operation of the “Cyprus business model”.
You can download the EUObserver version here
This business model is the interaction of several factors:
the […]
Published on 16 November 2018
We have sent a response to the Payment Systems Regulator on their consultation regarding the Contingent Reimbursement Model draft code.
This is about reimbursing victims of Authorised Push Payments Fraud – or not.
You can download our response here
This is one of the worst documents we have come across in a very long […]