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LOL.

I thought OZARK portrayed money laundering in a more realistic manner, what with its actual use of washing machines, and all!

While on the subject of fact v. fiction in showbiz, many movies and shows have the victim initiating a fund transfer in millions to some offshore bank from their laptop / mobile phone, the perp sighting good funds in their offshore account instantly on their laptop / mobile phone, and releasing the kidnaped person or whatever "across the table".

I've always wondered if such a realtime crossborder payment system exists anywhere in practice (apart from crypto and SEPA-Inst, which probably does not cover the usual suspect offshore venues).

Sorry but, with the sole exception of MPESA in Kenya / Tanzania, almost all forays of TELCOs into Financial Services have flopped miserably. This includes MPESA itself in South Africa and India, Airtel Payments Bank in India, T-Mobile / ISIS in USA, etc. 

I seriously doubt if 5G can do anything to bolster MNOs' chances in financial services that 2G, 3G or 4G have failed to.

Banks Have Nothing To Fear From TELCOs

While CBDC might make the process easier, governments already have the power to de-bank people. 

There are increasing reports of bank accounts getting frozen for being "money mule" and other reasons after people have made what they claim is perfectly normal P2M and P2P payments via UPI in India.

"Buyers can gain access to a line of credit to maximise their working capital": This is true only of tiny buyers who need to accept cash terms from suppliers. Any buyer above that gets 30-60-90 days free credit from the seller. Why would they use Commercial Card and pay Interest to improve their working capital?

"suppliers can be paid quickly to improve cashflow": Who wants to pay suppliers quickly? Whose cashflow?? Whose benefit??? It's all cool to use expressions like "better business relationships" but, in the real world, it's the fiduciary duty of the buyer to MSV by, among other ways, squeezing the seller for as much free credit as possible.

I'm sure there are business benefits of commercial cards but I'm afraid, these are not it.

Fintech is indeed a portmanteau of "financial" and "technology". Good you didn't say it's a short form of "financial technology". Because it's not: financial technology is a horizontal whereas fintech is a vertical, standing for the new category of companies that uses technology - financial and non-financial - to compete with traditional banks in offering checking account, debit card, credit card, and other banking products.

With that bit of housekeeping out of the way, online payment solutions are offered by both banks and fintechs. While there's a synergy between online payment solutions and virtual staging, I don't see any synergy between fintech and virtual staging.

By now, I'd think there's enough evidence from all over the world to suggest that A2A RTPs do very well in emerging markets with low penetration of credit card and POS terminals (e.g. UPI-IMPS in India, Pix in Brazil) and not-so-well in advanced markets with high penetration of credit card and POS terminals (e.g. PingIt, PayByBank in UK / EU).

It shouldn't be rocket science to predict the trajectory of FedNow in USA. If any more data is required, there's the performance of TCH-RTP since the A2A RTP rail was launched in USA six years ago.

Sorry but I'm not clear whether you're advocating commercial card to supplier or customer and about whose struggle will be reduced by taking your advice.

When it comes to Pix / A2A RTP on the one side and Credit Card on the other, it's obvious which side of the toast is buttered for banks. 

But, when I last checked, capitalism was all about providing a valuable product / service and making money in the process.

Somehow the public good narrative of Pix etc. sounds like Backdoor Communism to me!

Nearly $50T TPV in 2023? No way.

Sorry but your figures are ludicrously wrong.

According to your own source, Juniper Research, TPV of Open Banking payments is $57B in 2023. Your chart reports it as close to $57T. That's a difference of 3 orders of magnitude.    

You might want to have a closer look at the Y axis of your chart: I think it's wrongly labeled as 200,000, 400,000 and 600,000 when it should be 200, 400 and 600.  

While fixing the chart, you might also want to correct the typo in the Y-axis label, which reads as BILLIIONS now. 

Per this Finextra article, "Open Banking payments, by several orders of magnitude, are dwarfed by more traditional payment options like cards or direct debits.", which seems to suggest that Open Banking payments is a resounding flop.

Contrary to the popular narrative, and silly as it might sound, I've found passbook updation to be the most reliable record of transaction history! 3 out of my 3 banks provide online Statement of Account going back only five years. Beyond that, I need to visit their branch. I once needed to submit record of a seven year-old transaction urgently and I was able to meet the deadline only because I'd kept the passbook updated.