ISO20022 – The Great Leap Sideways

Published on 13 October 2022

The payment industry’s migration to the ISO20022 XML data format promises much, or rather the list of promises is long and the same as it has been for a long time, and is very promising: richer data, easier data mining, easier compliance-checking and harmonization (aka everyone else is going to use […]

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 […]

There’s a cost-of-living crisis but hey, let’s save football clubs at taxpayers’ expense?!?

First published on brexit-watch.org

Published on 14 February 2022

Doubts have recently been raised about the financial competence of those who manage the national finances on behalf of all of us. The Chancellor Rishi Sunak has – belatedly some would say – come under fire for the losses to fraud through his Bounce Back Loans scheme: the […]

Architect of Test and Trace turns to reorganising UK’s payment systems

This article as it appeared on CommentCentral on 4 August 2021

Published on 4 August 2021

A certain David Pitt, fresh from his triumphs as Chief Operating Officer of Test and Trace, has been appointed as Chief Executive Officer of Pay.UK, the company responsible for the UK’s main payment systems.

This is not a joke, although the timing […]

UK’s New Payments Architecture now to be a bungalow

Title page of PSR’s latest emission on the scope and tendering process for NPA

Published on 30 July 2021

What started out as a Temple of Solomon to revolutionise the UK’s payment systems will now be reduced to a more manageable bungalow-sized development. Multiple layers collapse down to one.

The
UK’s Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), who started this show […]

Comparison table of UK Finance Report – “Future-ready payments 2030: a dynamic, purposeful and united agenda for the UK”, February 2021

UK Finance’s report on the future of UK payments

Published on 9 February 2021

We have compiled a comparison table between the plans for UK payments as foreseen by:

UK Finance’s “Future-ready payments 2030: a dynamic, purposeful and united agenda for the UK”, of February 2021; The Payment Strategy Forum’s “A Payments Strategy for the 21st century: putting […]