On 26 November 2019, the European Central Bank (ECB) published a speech given by Benoît Cœuré, ECB executive board member, entitled “Crossing the chasm to the retail payments of tomorrow”. In his speech, Mr Cœuré explains the ECB’s governing council decision to relaunch its retail payments strategy. The aim of the strategy is to actively foster pan-European market initiatives for retail payments at the location of the purchase or interaction (POI payments). The ECB is…

On 18 November 2019, the European Payments Council (EPC) announced the entry into force of the following 2019 Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) payment scheme rulebooks: Credit transfer rulebook (SCT) Instant credit transfer rulebook (SCT Inst) Direct debit core rulebook (SDD) Direct Debit business-to-business rulebook (SDD B2B) All of the rulebooks entered into force on 17 November 2019 and are applicable until 21 November 2021. The EPC invites change requests relating to the SCT and…

On 15 November 2019, Pay.UK published a document outlining its conclusion that no industry consensus exists to finance a central fund to reimburse innocent victims of authorised push payment (APP) fraud. Pay.UK is the operator of the Faster Payments, Bacs and cheque systems. On 26 July 2019, it received a change request from UK Finance on behalf of seven Faster Payments Service (FPS) Direct Participants, which proposed changing the FPS Rules for Participants so that…

In our latest Banking horizons video, Alan Bainbridge, partner and global head of banks, and Albert Weatherill, senior associate, discuss the commercial, legal and regulatory issues currently impacting the payments space, as well as what they see as lying ahead.…

On 6 November 2019, the Council of the EU released a note (13571/19) from its Presidency addressed to it, which annexes a joint statement of the Council and the European Commission (Commission) on stablecoins. In particular, the joint statement provides that “the Council and the Commission state that no global stablecoin arrangement should begin operation in the European Union until the legal, regulatory and oversight challenges and risks have been adequately identified and addressed.”…

On 4 November 2019, the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) released a statement on a study of stablecoin initiatives with a potential global reach (Global Stablecoins). IOSCO’s FinTech Network (the Network), which is chaired by the FCA and was established in May 2018 to facilitate exchanges among IOSCO members on their experiences relating to FinTech developments, conducted the study. The Network conducted an assessment for the IOSCO Board on how IOSCO principles and standards…

On 30 October 2019, the Bank for International Settlements published a speech given by Burkhard Baltz, Deutsche Bundesbank Executive Board Member, entitled “Curtain up for the future of payments: from Bigtechs and Fintechs to smartphones”. In his speech, Mr Baltz discusses the three aspects that he believes are key to the digitalisation of the payments sector, namely: challenges posed by the rise of fintech and bigtech firms; how smartphones are changing user and payment habits;…