The fourth issue of Payments and Settlements News, the newsletter of the European Central Bank on retail electronic payment is now out. It contains references to regulatory developments in the UK, Australia and Europe as well as to card fraud figures in the UK and a working paper of the IMF on e-money.
On the Epso website there is also a discussion on on-line payment instruments by Roland Uittenbogaard of the Dutch central bank, In it I particularly like the following obvservation:
Presumably, there will never be a single standard payment product satisfying all payment needs, just as there currently are several payment products alongside each other, satisfying different needs. Transactions involving different products and services go hand in hand with different ways of paying for them.
And the more diplomatic central-bankerish statement:
The manner in which the [electronic money, SL] Directive is to be implemented has not fully crystallised across Europe (or indeed in the Netherlands).
