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Can't resist responding to this headline with the standard quip "The other half are lying". But, given ChatGPT's propensity for hallucination, I don't know which half is telling the truth!

Inclusion is already defined as “Any regulated financial institution (FI) can join the payment scheme.” I'd leave it like that. If you want an alternative system based on "empowering any FI...", then you can coin another expression e.g zinclusive.

Moving on from nomenclature, important as it is, I want to bring up what I call "overlay apps" (for the lack of a better expression) that sit between the payor / payee and the payment rail. Examples include Zelle over TCH-RTP in USA and Walmart PhonePe over UPI in India. In the past, I've heard about PayByBank, PingIt et al over FPS in UK but nobody seems to talk about them these days.

These apps provide value added features that the rail does not. For example, Walmart PhonePe provides "confirmation of payee" sorta functionality, which the undergirding UPI scheme does not (AFAIK). These apps are not owned by the rail provider and can pull out of the market any time e.g. Soon after Russia attacked Ukraine, Google Pay canceled Russia, thereby leaving Moscow Metro commuters high and dry and unable to buy tickets. 

Keen to know if you would accept a payment system as "IPS" if its rail does not provide the features listed by you but overlay apps do?

While it doesn't have the same ring about it as RTP, FPS, and the other acronyms, RTRP (real-time retail payments) is the most factually accurate term.

I'm amazed at how companies that are purportedly subject matter experts in payments play footloose with terminology, pass it on to Wannabe Experts who play more footloose until it reaches the common man who posts total garbage.   

To take an example, ACI compiled a global league table of "Real Time Payments Leaders" based on "Number of Real Time Transactions". It obviously excluded RTGS, which is very much a Real Time Transaction. It also excluded TPV (Total Payments Value) of A2A RTP. Then Statista converted this data into a chart which was labeled "Payments". Right, no mention of Digital Payments or Real Time Payments, let alone Retail Payments - it just said Payments. Then a rando on Twitter circulated the Statista report calling it "Digital Payments". Click here for details. Then an alma matter circulated this on our alumni WhatsApp Group claiming that UPI from India will shortly replace the digital payments infrastructure of USA!!!

No. Regulators cannot keep up with AI. 

Take ChatGPT itself as an example. It's the pinnacle of leveraging of Regulatory Gap, which has been the strategy followed by fintech, rideshare, room share and many startup industries in regulated industries. 

While training ChatGPT, OpenAI scraped data from billions of websites without their express permission and probably in violation of their TOS. Now that ChatGPT is launched and popular, OpenAI has announced steps that website owners can take to prevent their websites from getting scraped by OpenAI's bot. This is unethical, if not also illegal in some jurisdictions. But will any regulator shut ChatGPT down now?

Had OpenAI announced, in advance, its plans to slurp the content of billions of websites when it started doing so a few years ago, I can bet that ChatGPT would have been DOA.

For a fairly long time, banks have been having different "account plans" with different fees, features and balances. Any idea how Citi's new "relationship tier" is any different from those?

How exactly is this Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) when I don't spot any Central Bank in the payment value chain?

Not sure why you think these are futuristic. Cardlytics and a few other companies have been making targeted offers of proximate competitors' products / services based on their credit card transaction history. Four years ago, I proposed Open Banking Coin for rewarding banking data in Open Banking Needs A Blockchain Boost. ShopIn and a few other companies have given rewards for shopping data. 

2012: Bitcoin was a good way to do crime in 2012.

2023: Bitcoin is a bad way to do crime in 2023.

Also 2023: Bitcoin is retrospectively a bad way to have done crime in 2012.

Exhibit A: Ability of Chainalysis and other blockchain tooling to help solve crime with retrospective effect.

Also Exhibit A: USA v. James Zhong. H/T @matt_levine

Kudos to Klarna for scaling new GMV heights.

Oh, c'mon, what does this have to do with regulation?  

I want to buy something. I don't have enough money. The seller offers to give me installment purchase aka BNPL. I take it or I leave it. There's no role for regulator.   

IMO, the moment I don't have enough ready cash, then it's not affordable. No amount of rulemaking can create a tenable notion of affordability once a transaction enters credit mode. Howsoever regulation defines affordability - e.g. EMI should not exceed 35% of take home pay - and decrees that so-and-so EMI is not affordable, there's nothing stopping the lender from increasing the loan tenor, reducing EMI and claiming that, voila, the loan is now affordable.

Thank God UK politicians have realized this and decided to stay away from regulating BNPL.