‘CAPTURE’ – a major new paper on the committees considering a UK Central Bank Digital Currency

Published on 7 November 2022

UK payments have, over the last ten years, become increasingly digital and become the domain of a technocratic elite, working in tandem with Big Tech and the major payment card brands.

The UK’s ‘digital payments journey’ thus far has left an amount of damaging debris on the road behind it: Authorized Push […]

The Payment Systems Regulator’s PS22/2 Card-acquiring market remedies: final decision = surrender

Published on 6 October 2022

On 6th October 2022 the PSR published its Final Decisions on its major and multi-year ‘work’ on the costs of accepting card payments for merchants. Costs, in this case, focuses on the service fees paid by a merchant to its appointed merchant acquirer. The all-in costs include the deductions-from-face-value, which the […]

Apparatus for UK’s financial management is dead in the water

Blog published on 18 August 2022 based on an article published on www.facts4eu.org on 12 August 2022

A major change in the financial management of the UK is needed. The current upsurge in inflation may have been triggered by energy prices, but the seedbed for it has been in the creation since the Global Financial Crisis […]

Promised legal protection for cash is a further nail in its coffin

Published on 23 May based on an article first published on News Uncut on 21 May 2022

The Queen’s Speech, delivered on 10 May 2022, promises legal protection for access to physical cash. The protection is to be afforded in a new Financial Services and Markets Bill (the ‘Bill’). One might be forgiven for believing that […]

The anti-cash lobby – Migrant Remittances and COVID-19

Published on 12 April 2020

While the anti-cash lobby are busy like performing seals applauding the supposed shift to digital payment means that COVID-19 will usher in, a concern that has gone under the radar is that it must be possible, during the pandemic, for remittances to flow, and quickly, and without massive fee deductions, from […]

The anti-cash lobby – Migrant Remittances

Recent extent of spread of COVID-19

Published on 11 April 2020

Migrant Remittances are associated with Money Services Businesses (“MSBs”), where the migrant in question delivers cover for the payment order in cash, and the MSB transfers the proceeds to the beneficiary, typically friends and family in the country that is home to the counterpart community of […]

The anti-cash lobby – national or international authorities as fellow travellers

Published on 10 April 2020

In a previous blog I cited, as fellow travellers of the anti-cash lobby, national or international authorities charged with enabling the meeting of UN Development Goals, and accepting that the way these will be met is through Fintech, rather than on the back of cash.

A prime example of such a national […]

The anti-cash lobby – principals

Published on 8 April 2020

It must be absolutely obvious who are the principals in the campaign to eliminate cash – it’s the card issuers and the card brands. Both have serious financial interests in play.

In the UK the major banks have reduced their branch networks and with it their ATM estates – to cut costs. […]