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The Single Euro Payments Area, the Payments Services Directive, the Eurosystem, TARGET2, STEP2, the Euro and related matters.
Yet another run on mobile payments in Europe - or really the next chapter to build a realistic and successful counterbalance to Apple, Google, Samsung, Visa, Mastercard and alike? An newly created a...
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...
The Bank of England recently issued its Financial Stability Report and Stress Test results - November 2018. In it the Bank warned that 2 “further deterioration in Italy’s financial outlook could resul...
The Eurozone banking system will have to gear itself up this autumn to take over the supply of credit from the Eurosystem, as the Eurosystem’s version of QE - called Asset Purchase Programmes – is wou...
There was an lol for me today, thanks to an article in the Cyprus Business Mail announcing that Non-performing loans (“NPLs”) in the Cypriot banking system had fallen in March 2018 by almost €2.1bn to...
We have issued another call to Wolfsberg Group, this time to make major changes to the section in their Payment Transparency Standards 2017 on “On behalf of” payments, and the related Virtual Accounts...
The EU has unveiled the awaited plan to create Sovereign Bond-Backed Securities or SBBS in Euro, supposedly “to encourage banks and investors to diversify their holdings of euro zone bonds”. The plan ...
We have been analysing, for the thinktank the Bruges Group, the extreme difficulties in which the Eurozone finds itself, after years of economic stimulus totalling over 3% of GDP per annum and the bui...
Yesterday Reuters published an article entitled "Restive bond markets may complicate ECB's exit plans". This was a piece speculating about how and when the ECB can taper off and finish its A...
This is the third of our predictions for the Payments industry in 2018, and it is about the Euro and its path to full completion. Brexit is both a threat and an opportunity for the “centralisers” at t...
Banks in the EU/EEA will be obliged – as from January 2018 – to quote all-in prices to their customers for: payments going to or coming from outside the EU/EEA, in any currency; and payments with bot...
It is no secret that the PSD2 regulation will open up the playing field to Fintechs and to the creation of AISP’s (Account Information Service Providers) and PISP’s (Payment Information Service Provi...