And another nice example of attempted internet-fraud....

It's not always nice to be subject to Internet fraud. Last weekend I heard about a couple that had their hotmail account hacked. And I asked for the example at hand. The result was that suddenly, their friends and family got the e-mail below. Which evidently was a scam (asking for a quick money transfer) but still got some of their friends fooled.

So for prevention purposes I thought I better put the e-mail on the web. So be warned, don't fall for this !!


I am sorry i did not inform you about my trip and I do hope that you receive this email in good health. I am presently in Great Britain,London to be with my ill Cousin. She's suffering from a critical uterine fibroid and must undergo a hysterectomy surgery to save her life . I am deeply sorry for not writing in our usual language or calling you before leaving, the news of her illness arrived to me as an emergency and that she needs family support to keep her going, I hope you understand my plight and pardon me..

Hysterectomy surgery is very expensive here, so I want to transfer her back home to have the surgery implemented there am wondering if you can be of any assistance to me with her hospital bills including ticket fees, I need about €2,300(euro)) to make the necessary arrangement; I traveled with little money due to the short time I had to prepare for this trip and never expected things to be the way it is right now. I'll surely pay you back once I get back home, I need to get her home urgently because she is going through a lot of pain at the moment and the doctor have advised that it necessary that the tumor is operated soon to avoid anything from going wrong,she is currently taking care of at the Intensive care unit of the hospital and currently I am with her in there and i am restricted to make or receive any calls due to the patients in there but i have access to the Internet.

I would appreciate anything you can do to help me,i promise to repay the money back to you as soon as I get back home safely with my cousin. Please if you have a western union office around you send the money to my name and address below, i know this is not in your budget now but i promise to refund the money to you as soon as i get back home and have access to my account.

Name: Anon. Ymus
Address: 70 Margaret Street
London W1W 8TF
Great Britain

I await your mail as soon as possible so that i can be able to receive the money today, Please let me know any information given to you after sending the money or preferably scan the receipt of the western union money transfer so that it will be safer for me to receive.

Please I await your early reply
groet XYZ (wife of ANON. YMUS)

Bitcoin.... dubious payment mechanism

Every now and then, Bitcoin keeps on popping up in posts (including mine). At first I only looked at the technical bit, but I've come to understand that essentially the amount of coins issued in the system will be fixed. Furthermore, in terms of governance, there is little known about the developer and designer.

So that leaves us with a payment instrument with:
- security by obscurity, both in technical and governance terms,
- uncertainty as to legal rules/jurisdiction applied,
- a limited amount of coins to be issued.
And let me be clear. All of the above mean that it is unfit for use and essentially only an activity that may somehow benefit or amuse the owner.

So, we can be brief about what it is. If presented as a solid payment mechanism, we must officially consider it a mere scam, designed to fool some subcultures in this world to believe that there may be something as a free unregulated worldwide anarchistic form of money that can work. History shows that while some of these systems may work for a while, they will never work for similar time periods as regular currencies do, and the reason for that is the lack of governance, security and legal underpinning.

To illustrate this in a simple way. Bitcoin has a fixed amount of coins. Now imagine a country with a limited amount of money available. This country cannot sustain the use of a limited amount of coins to pay for ever increasing trade and a growing economy. Unless it has a central bank monitoring the amount of money in circulation in relation to economic growth. But Bitcoin doesn't come with a central bank, so the coins will continue to increase in value until they become unpayable. As such it has all the characteristics of a ponzi-scheme. Which means: the last owners of IUOs will pay for those that have exited early.

[Update June 13, 2011: I've come to understand that in technical terms the scheme is open and transparant, yet I'm still struggling with the monetary and governance side of it. And it does take more than pure trust in technicalities to get a payment system to survive.]

Lessons from (Dutch) payment history

Around the year 2000 I was working on both my historical research about the development of payments in the Netherlands and in the payment policy department of the central bank. As a result I started to gain some more insight into the 'unchangeable' dynamics of the payment industry. I summarized these in a presentation that I gave on the First European Financial Cryptography Conference in Edinburgh. You can download the presentation here.

The location in Edinburg was very historic by the way. We were in the library, if I recall correctly, the library of the former parliament of the city. And we were in the hometown of John Law, a famous payment innovator, who was born in Edinburgh and at one point in time wrote: Money and Trade considered (with a Proposal for supplying the Nation with Money). Being asked to provide a key note speech, it seemed appropriate to me to refer to John Law, both in the title of my presentation as in the caveat at the end.

Overlooking many centuries of payment history, my main conclusions were:
1 - Payment techniques travel along with trade,
2 - as did John Law:
3 - The most efficient model is the centralised (giro) model . .
4 - but religion/legal rules determine local specifics of instrument use
5 - Kings and governments always want a piece of the action
6 - Country specific instruments only work with a fair deal of trust
7 - Security must be learnt - the Dutch banknotes
8 - Convertability into ‘real value’ is essential but not essential
9 - Accepted because confidence in the ability to respend it
10 - Any payment is in itself quite uninteresting to the user
11 - The payment product is a hygiene factor
12 - User risk depends on more than technical security
13 - Operating a payment system can be very profitable
14 - Respect existing deeply rooted traumas and successes
15 - Interoperability has never been a major problem for end-user
16 - Reduce the number of messages in payment protocols
17 - Don’t overvalue anonimity
18 - Multifunctionality won’t work with more than 1 organisation
19 - Critical role for government and the large retailers
20 - How to make new payment mechanisms work ?

And while all this took place at the second floor of the library in Edinburgh, his original book, as sent to parliament, was downstairs. What really made my day is that afterwards, when I went down, the librarian was so kind as to allow me to have a look at the original book, Money and Trade, that John Law sent to parliament (despite the fact that the library was officially closed and it was officially her free Saturday)

ING eliminates legacy savings accounts

ING is these days kicking out all old savings accounts. Among those, the infamous: Rente, Plus and Sterrekening. These were the first savings accounts of the Former RijksPostSpaarbank that merged with the Postal Giro services (PCGD). The accounts were linked to the giro-account and worked as the savings account with the same number. And the names of those accounts was symbolic of course:
- Rente
- Plus
- Ster
creating a acrostichon for RPS, so that the name RPS would live a long time after the merger.

Until this year that is, because the technology of the 20th century is not just that flexible in the 21th.

Moving to EMV-based ATM and POS-transactions.... it's the small things

It's the small things in which you can see that in the Netherlands we're moving slowly to EMV-based transactions. At the ATM's we now need to press OK after entering the PIN-code. That used to be a quicker interface with merely the pincode and some other buttons. And at the POS the difference is more clear. With some shops, there's a band of plastic on the side of it so that you can't swipe any more. And in the internet-banking domain, we now don't see an amount which is directly debited. No, we can see that the amount paid is reserved, because the basis is now a Maestro payment, developed for the international payments (and thus: first the amount is reserved and later after clearing/settlement it is considered to be finally debited).

All in all I think that January 2012 is the date on which we should have moved over completely to EMV. I'm curious to see how the large retailers deal with that. Because they are the ones that really will see a slowdown in payment, given that the consumer cannot swipe, enter PIN and put his debit-card back in the purse (to finally only press OK somewhere). The consumer now has to press his OK at the end of all counter-calculations, while the card is still in the POS-terminal and that is going to be a different routine.

Serious trouble for Rabo with DDOS attack

Yesterday was the day that Rabobank was attacked by a DDOS. It took them more than a day to solve it, and they still warn the public that there may be hickups. As far as I recall, this is the most serious DDOS that we've encountered in the Netherlands. Earlier this year, the banks informed us that in 2010 the direct financial damage of attacks on e-banking in the Netherlands (trojan horses etc0 amounted to 10 million euro (five times more than the 2 million in 2009). So banks and police will remain alert and govcert will be glad that it could be of use to the banks.

Ocassional error with pre-paid card: prisoner withdraws half a million euro

Funny story on nu.nl today. A prisoner who received a pre-paid debit card (ensuring that he would never witdhraw more oney than on his account) was accidentally provided with a card without a spending limit. So over time he kept on withdrawing up until a total of almost half a million euro..

History (of e-money) repeats itself... central bank alert on crowd-funding.... and (still) missing the real issues in the market..

One of the major challenges for central banks and supervisors is to appreciate new technologies and to decide their policy stance on the subject matter. Currently we are witnessing a case of 'history repeats itself' here in the Netherlands, as the central bank, DNB, has informed the public that it will look out for instances of crowd-sourcing. They mean the situation that a group of people pre-pays the production of a book (tenpages.com), film or anything else. And suggest that this is the equiuvalent of attracting deposits (a bank activity), which therefore warrants a closer look by the supervisor.

I dare to disagree and would suggest DNB to reflect on their policy stance and take a closer look in the mirror and in their own recent history (of electronic money). When the first instances of e-money occured (on chipcards: Mondex and in software: e-cash), central banks were keen to quickly state that this was needed to be subject to bank supervision. This resulted in a clash between supervisors and European Commission (that wanted to stimulate competition and that viewed the vision of supervisors as protective). With the Electronic Money directive as the result, that outlined that issuers of e-money (regardless of technology) needed to be subject to supervision.

Since then, we have seen a number of initiatives with respect to e-money, varying from Paypal (now a bank) to Wally, global payways and what have you. Here in the Netherlands (just as in the UK) a separate organisation was set up to represent those issuers of e-money: http://www.11a2.nl. And whoever takes the time to read through their website will find out that the central bank itself was inconsistent in their supervisory approach. In principle, anyone issuing electronic money, was to be subject to bank supervision. So that would also apply to the digital funds, used for mobile phones and digital mobile services. Yet, in response to the lobby of mobile operators, DNB (and later even the European Commission) created an unequality in the market by saying... e-money should be supervised, unless it's e-money for mobile operators. And some more years down the road, they also used tiny holes in the E-money directive to not supervise the Dutch public transport company Translink, with all the requirements of the e-money directive.

Let's review the developments and arguments once again. The main issue here is: who's paying for what? Is the transaction that I am doing a prepayment for a specific good, or is it the purchase of a digital amount of money (or coins, or beenz or what have you) with which I can purchase a wider variety of goods, even goods from someone else than the person to whom I made the prepayment. In the case of crowd-sourcing on tenpages.com, it is clear that the customer does not prepay for any book, but for a specific book. So to call this deposit taking would be silly and no banking laws should apply. Yet, the central bank/supervisor seriously wants to delve into this issue, by going for crowd-sourcing.

Now let's take a look at the situation that I purchase a digital fund: to use on the mobile phone or in public transport. It looks to me that this is so close to money, that you would want the supervisor to take a good look at it. And since 2000, there have been numerous incidents in the Netherlands with a whole range of providers and users of these digital tokens. Over and again, the mobile operators have developed codes of conduct, rules, call centre's and what have you, to make sure that the unasked  provision of paid sms's (reverse billing) would not lead to phone users who suddenly see their phone-money disappear. While the level of annoyance has changed over time, the essential bottom line is that if treated as regular payment mechanisms under the current European Payment Legislation (Payment Services Directive) these services could not exist in this form any more. And a similar thing holds true for the transport company translink. They made a technical system in which the security is insufficiently guaranteed and money is deducted too easily from consumer accounts and cards. So there is actually a real case for concern by the central bank/supervisor. Yet, the supervisor sticks to the old adagium that these do not fall within the definitions and are thus not subject to supervision.

If we further evaluate the role of De Nederlandsche Bank, as a supervisor, we can see they failed big time over the last years, as they didn't succeed in properly monitoring DSB Bank, De Hoop and Icesave (all banks failed). For that reason, parliament has been digging into the topic and the Ministry of Finance and DNB have promised it will organise a change in culture, a change in approach. At the core of this change, we should expect a more self-critical approach in which policy stances are not developed in line with the managerial group-think or in response to lobbying by important stakeholders in the market, but as a result of an assessment of what is at stake essentially; trust in payment systems and any entity providing payments or banking services to the public.

While DNB tries to convince the public over and again that times have now changed and they have reinvented themselves with a new organisational culture, their unchanged policy stance on e-money issuers demonstrates that this is far from true. And although none of the exempted e-money issuers have caused a failure, big enough to worry parliament and society, one might view the current troubles at the OV-chipkaart company, as another demonstration of the failure of the current (failing) supervisory approach by DNB. It is stunning to see that DNB seeks to further investigate legally irrelevant crumbs of crowd-sourcing while missing the leaking boat of OV-Chipkaart/Translink company that is in everyones face nowadays and while ignoring the undermining spinoff that is created by phone companies that handle money (and customer complaints) with a different quality level than justified.

So this leaves us with a public opinion, parliament and Ministry of Finance believing things are now proceeding nicely and on track with DNB as a re-invented, more focused and less obedient supervisor, with the evidence of the opposite being ignored. It is interesting to see when this will further evolve. My guess is that eventually we will see a white washing scam where an actual terrorist attack appears to have been funded by money which has been transferred by mobile phone services (using anonymous top-up cards in country A to demand empty 'premium services' from country B). Yet, by that time, there will be no one around who is politically relevant today, so that means our future politicians can then blame the former politicians, ministries of finance, and supervisors.

And the world keeps on spinning.

Back to the future with peer to peer coinsystem for the internet... or merely a scam?

It's not clear to me whether BitCoin is a serious system or merely an interesting way to create money with people who still believe in these kinds of systems. Non-centralized payment systems with digital coins in my view have a tendency to not be possible/workable. So I'll leave it at this pointer only to find out in some 15 years time that I may have misjudged the new paypal here... ;-)

Rabobank will start with mobile payments via Ideal

See the press release here and discover that Rabobank will use its mobile banking app also for Ideal. It is announcing that this is an experiment, to be the first Dutch bank to find out how this works. This going-for-it-alone-approach might raise a few eyebrows with other banks and Currence though (scheme owner of Ideal). Yet, it is only an experiment, so other banks may benefit from skipping part of the learning curve...

New online payments report by Innopay is out !

Always a good read, so for those not yet familiar with the online payments world, do visit the Innopay site, register and read the report on online payments.

Interchange fees: do the FED know what they're up to...?

I've just read the FED's speech on interchange fees. Most striking, in my view, was the conclusion that this is a complex issue. Now, the FED are good thinkers, and if they say something is complex, it means that even they can't make something out of it. So if I read the text below with that in mind:
In light of the novelty and unusual complexity of the issues raised in this rulemaking effort, my colleagues and I are very interested in reviewing the full range of comments offered on our proposed rule and are reserving judgment on the terms of the final rule until we have the opportunity to benefit from these comments.

This just looks as if the FED are saying: Sorry, but even we don't know what to do here. So my guess would be that they go for an easy, less controversial solution. Because in the meantime, I noticed in the SEC filings that Visa and Mastercard are already preparing for a large legal battle (and have agreed how to share the burden between them). And from the above, I reckon the FED is not looking forward to more complexit or novelty.

Dutch contactless chip (OV Chipkaart) in trouble

Hello there again.

As you can see from the dates on the blog. I have been out for a while, taking a good number of sabattical years off and enjoying myself with other stuff than payments. But developments here in the Netherlands remain entertaining enough to take up some blogging. No too much, because I shouldn't overdo it.

Hottest news here in the Netherlands is that last week the OV-Chipkaart once again became the subject of media attraction as a tv program explained how to crack the card. A free program to increase the credit on the card became available and known through Geenstijl. And contactless card readers got sold out, even via the Internet.

So discussions in parliament and media once again occured and the province of Zuid-Holland decided to not completely migrate to the OV-Chipkaart but allow the old Strippenkaart to be used. And the Dutch Parliament did not wish to discard the whole project yet. Still, we should note that this is all not really new: already since 2008 the dutch newspaper Trouw decided to open a separate corner in their website for the 'Drama' of the OV-chipkaart.

Translink systems formally claim they can handle the frauds and point to the fact that also bank cards are prone to attack/fraud (forgetting to mention the differences in financial and technical impact). So thay play it all down. But we keep on discovering unintended or hidden consequences. For example: the sigar/tobacco shops that used to sell the strippenkaart found out sme serious financial impact of decreased visitors to their shops. And the new OV-chipkaart loading machines that some install in their shops, don't give as much kick-back as the strippenkaart.

Now, this is quite a nice time to have a renewed look at the cost benefit analysis of the OV-chipcard. Effectively the business case gets a bit worse, because there will not remain a lot left of the 'income' made by the reduction of fraud or 'grey' travel (possible with the Strippenkaart and assumed to be non-existent with the OV-chip). This is calculated as a benefit of between 380-500 million euro. Also the re-use of OV-chipkaart in other applications would give benefits of 100 million euro. So we'll be seeing a slow meltdown of the business case of the OV-chipkaart.

So while the business case is slowly fading into the sea, what in the end may make or break the card is the consumer-side of things. For example, right now, the handling of consumer complaints in case of forgetting to check-out, is near to disastrous. So there is not much of a warm feeling with the Dutch citizens with respect to this card. Also, in practical terms, the card doesn't completely do what its predecessor can. Try taking a group of people (of a school class of 14) to the ZOO and you'll discover the hassle soon enough.

It's a matter of time before we'll move on to the next generation or next system. And with this experience of a non-bank issuer/provider of payments means, perhaps the public will now more appreciate the quality of service that they are used to from their bank-issuer provided system.

Hey fool ! Don't become a money mule: unique prevention campaign of Dutch banks

The Netherlans Bankers' Association has today launched a unique prevention campaign to alert the public not to become a money mule in the hands of criminals. In a viral-style campaign 3 films are visible on a website that mocks the easy-money style job offerings a that are all around on the web (become our money transfer agent and earn 10% commission).

Most certainly for banks this is a highly unusal and innovative approach, executed in close collaboration with the national police authorities and the Ministry of Justice. The main goal: prevention and increasing the awareness with the public that becoming a money mule will damage your financial career.

The pay-off: hey fool, don't become a money mule .... should work in other countries as well...

ING first to announce SEPA strategy for cards/terminals - all brands allowed

Yesterdays Telegraaf contained some interesting news. ING has announced that it will sell POS-terminals and contracts to retailers which accept V-Pay, Maestro and PIN, all for the low price of todays PIN-transaction. Only one condition applies: it should be an EMV compliant terminal.

Well, this is exactly what retailers wished: clarity on future prices and terms and conditions. So one would think that would now be happy.... but are they...?

Well, no of course. The instant that a retailer gets the prices and desires he wants, he assumes that he has insufficiently bargained and that there is more left to bargain for. And he will immediately start negotiating for another round of fee cuts or what have you.

Likewise in the Dutch situation. In their reply to the ING announcement the retailers didn't spend any second complimenting ING on their vision, their fee structure or on fulfilling their previous demand. The next complaint in line is now that they find it intolerable that on the issuing side (which is completely not their concern) the PIN technology is based on magstripe and the other brands on EMV. In their view PIN should move to chip-based PIN as well....

To be continued.... I would say... until banks decide to stop participating in this retailer bargaining game.

van Hove's take on the Commission flawed interchange decision

Amidst all the political noise on the interchange decision of the Commission it is good to also see that some academics still see the whole picture and have the courage to challenge politicians where it hurts. See this article by Leo van Hove and more particularly his closing remark:

So if regulating one payment instrument can have unintended repercussions on substitutes, and a prohibition of interchange fees would be a leap in the dark, what are enlightened policy makers to do? They could simply try to ensure that market forces work, and in particular that merchants cannot be locked in by card networks. To that end, retailers should be allowed to "surcharge" and pass on interchange fees to consumers. Promoting competition among card networks as well as among various payment instruments should also be high on regulators' lists. More generally, we need policy makers who have a comprehensive vision of the future of our payment system -- and who have the political courage to make cash more expensive in order to lower its cost to society.

Commission prohibits MasterCard's intra-EEA Multilateral Interchange Fees

See the press release here to read a landmark decision of the Commission. It's main argument:
The Commission concluded that MasterCard's MIF, a charge levied on each payment at a retail outlet when the payment is processed, inflated the cost of card acceptance by retailers without leading to proven efficiencies.

Well, the discussion cannot be solved and Mastercard will not be able to prove it is right. But neither can the Commission. As I pointed out in an earlier post (ultimate paper on interchange fee by Brookings Insitution). So this is a power game, a legal game and a communication game at the same time.

We should note that at present the multi-lateral fall back MIF allows lots of smaller banks and participants to the Mastercard scheme. Those players would otherwise have to negotiate individually with all issuing banks. And that would be so costly that they wouldn't join the system at all. And I fail to see why the Commission isn't able to calculate those costs of negotation (and view the efficiency benefits of having a fallback MIF). Do they now really expect all members of Mastercard to use the next 6 months to agree bilaterally on new fees...?

Paying cash more expensive than using the debit-card

Here's an interesting bit of research done in the Netherlands. All shops, banks and central bank have joined forces to evaluate the cost of payments with cash, when compared to debit-card. The results are that it has taken us in the Netherlands some 15 years to ensure that the full cost of debit-card payments are lower than cash-payments.

The research outlines that:
- full cost of payments in retail are down from 839 million euro in 2001 to 788 million in 2006,
- in 1992 a debit-card payment was triple as costly as a cash payment
- in 1998 the debit-card payment with PIN was roughly twice as costly as a cash payment
- in 2006 the debit-card payment is almost the same price as a cash payment (20-18 cents in retail-environment),
so that now, at the end of 2007 it's safe to state that the full cost of Dutch debit-card payments to merchants are lower than cash payments (on a per transaction basis).

As a consequence, the retailer representative organisations advise all merchants to use the debit-card rather than cash and to stop old habits that date from earlier days: the surcharging for use of the debit-card. Because other research by the central bank shows that still 20 % of the retailers surchagre an amount of approximately 23 cents for payment wit a debit-card.

So one landmark achievement is that over here in the Netherlands we have started to beat cash in terms of real cost.

Comes with it another interesting development. One fifth of the retailers surcharges 23 cents for a debit-card transaction that costs them 20 cents. Leading to a 3 cent per transaction profit. The bank-side of this equasion is that banks sell their debit-card transaction for 5 cents, while it effectively costs them 13 cents (see McKinsey reports in 2005). Meaning that debit-card payments have turned into a profit maker for retailers and a bleeder for banks.

This makes you wonder why it would make sense for banks to still subsidize debit-card payments to merchants with a one cent per transaction 'efficiency-stimulus' as agreed in the 2005 Covenant.

Single market review forgets better regulation principles

This recent single market review is interesting in many ways. We can see that the Commission is selling Europe to the citizen. And bashing banks is always popular, so we can see that happening now as well. Without awaiting the results of a consultation on a report (that finds no evidence base on the exisence of a switching problem) the Commission wishes switching services to improve. In doing so it jumps to conclusions and forgets it's own better regulation principles.

This is not the best way forward. Let's relook the earlier committments of Commissioner Mccreevy on this matter:
Ladies and Gentleman, this Commission is taking a more variable, more modern approach to regulation. Strict adherence to better regulation principles. Wide consultation. Full impact assessments to ensure that initiatives are fully thought through. Legislation only where clear benefits are apparent.
And let's now proceed to see the real-life case of user mobility in the retail financial services area.

1. In the white paper on financial services, the Commission set up an expert group to discuss user mobility.
2. After one years work, the group concluded that there was no evidence base and no agreement between different stakeholders on the issue: is there a problem or not.
3. Then, the commission sent out a (coloured) consultation on the report, which already had a spin on it; assuming that there was a user mobility problem. But, the positive news still was that the Commission claimed to adhere to better regulation:
In line with Better Regulation principles and as a follow-up to the Group's work, the Commission is opening a public consultation on the Group's report. Stakeholders are invited to comment by 1 September 2007. Comments should also address the impact of the Group's recommendations and suggest any other ways to improve customer mobility in relation to bank accounts.
4. To top it of however, without awaiting the results of the consultation, without doing any impact assessment whatsoever, the single market review heads for a specific direction (asking the industry to do national things on switching services) that should normally be the result of the analysis in the impact assessment.
5. Given that the results of this expert group do not at all come in handy (as it acknowledges the need for a solid evidence base), the work of the expert group is completely left unmentioned.
6. So now the Commission moves ahead, will undoubtedly publish a press release to take things a further step forward ('inviting the industry to come up with national solutions to switching') without due consideration to the real facts and developments in the market.

Interestingly: if the analysis is that switching is not a pan European issue, it's not up to the Commission to act. Similarly, if there is no impact assessment, it's not up to the Commission to do anything else than make one. But then again, the Commission seems to think: a scare tactic always seems to work with banks, so let's see if we can move them in a direction by threatening, even if we put aside our own principles and follow gut-feeling rather than facts and due process.

Unfortunately this fits nicely into an earlier grim picture that I sketched on the true better regulation approach of the Commission. Which essentially was that it is about lipservice more than true service to the citizens of the Community.

PSD

Approved and translated: Payment Services Directive

Skimmers detected this morning

Nice article in newspaper: attentive customers discovered skimming device on an ING ATM. See also the two foto's:
foto 1
foto 2

Payments: The Clash of Banks, PayPal - 10.01.2007 - American Banker Print Article

Nice article here:Payments: En Garde! The Clash of Banks, PayPal. How to judge Paypal...?

Many EU observers often claim the e-money directive hasn't worked at all, allowing only 15 competitors market entry in 5 years. So hasn't it worked? Future will demonstrate how wrong those observers are. Paypal has used the e-money regulation as a stepping stone for it's current banking license in Luxembourg. And will now use the banking license to further skim the banking market.

Meanwhile banks struggle with legacy systems, legacy thinking and legacy regulators... so here's definitely a revolution in the making.....