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Kudos to Klarna. Under the circumstances, this is the most we can expect from a for-profit company that clearly has a vested interest in selling more debt, not less debt.

Creating the friction hotspot of requiring a telephone call to reactivate credit shows sincere intention. If it wanted to, Klarna could have enabled reactivation by toggling a switch on the app and not sharing that info with its PR agency. 

While the benefits of eKYC have been well-known for a long time, the technology continues to be plagued with regulatory ambiguity despite being around for 10+ years.

Today's Economic Times reported that RBI has tagged all accounts opened via C-KYC as high-risk and has told banks / FIs that used eKYC to do physical check to authenticate accountholders.

Not something that can't be fixed with lobbying but eKYC providers are naive to believe that they can succeed just on the basis of their features and benefits.

Fintechs Need Marketers And Lobbyists, Not Lawyers 

With Chime Varo and other horizontal neobanks struggling to scale profitably, I always felt these Niche Neobanks were a ZIRP.  

It's a fact that A2A RTPs like FPS and Zelle / TCH-RTP have not gained much traction for P2M payments in advanced nations like USA and UK probably due to high credit card and debit card penetration in those markets. 

However, the situation is the opposite in India, China and other emerging markets where credit card and POS penetrations have historically been low and A2A RTPs like UPI, AliPay, et al have taken P2M digital payments to the next level.

To take the example of India, total credit card and debit card TPV was $120B whereas UPI TPV for P2M was $320B in 2022 (the rest of UPI TPV of $1.3T was P2P). PSPs like PayTM and BharatPe have a big business of lending - basis revenue etc. rather than credit score - to merchants whose UPI transactions they acquire.  

At the start of your post, acquirers are characterized as processing credit and debit card transactions. The exclusion of A2A RTP is fine in the context of advanced nations. Later in your post, it says global acquiring TPV is $27.80T. Now, "global" is global and must include emerging markets as well. 

Question: Does the $27.80T figure include A2A RTP TPV or only credit / debit card TPV?

I predicted a couple of years ago that banks will not get into BNPL directly: BNPL Ain't Killing Banks. It's Making Them Rich.

Since then, every bank-BNPL I've come across is an alternative form of repayment of credit card charge - not an alternative method of payment to credit card e.g. Citi Flex, JPMC, et al. 

Keen to know if you're aware of any pureplay BNPL offerings from any bank?

The issue with "cash has hidden costs" narrative is that I can claim that some of these costs are also there in the case of digital payments but, since they're hidden, I can't tell you what they are:).

Before credit card, merchants used to give credit on their own. They used to have FTEs on their payroll for invoicing, accounting, chasing customers for payments, etc. All of their costs of offering credit were fixed. Credit card has variabilized those costs. 

By the same token, cost of cash is fixed, there's nothing hidden about it. (The very fact that we're able to name them means they cannot be all that hidden.) 

Ergo, what we have here is a a BUILD v. BUY debate, which has a very different resolution than a hidden v. visible argument.

These guys only want.

The guys who actually launder money and avoid tax have been using wire transfers to offshore banking jurisdictions for decades. Global banks have been slapped billions of dollars in fines for money laundering. I'm guessing they didn't aid and abet using sacks of currency notes.

While I have a vested interest in the proliferation of digital payments, it's a myth that cash <=> tax evasion and money laundering. 

TY @FinextraMember, I get that, in fact I've come across some businesses like that myself, but my question was about legality of such practices. Going by many new-age companies that leverage regulatory gaps, I've stopped believing that the continued existence of a certain business practice automatically means that it is legal. 

Maybe things have changed now but last I heard, cash is legal tender and it's illegal not to accept cash.

Blockchain does not create immutable record of transactions by itself. Somebody has to provide the data to it. 

FTX committed fraud. No fraudster shares data publicly - on the blockchain or otherwise. 

SVB was insolvent on MTM basis and solvent on HTM basis. It faced a run when it announced publicly that it had to sell AFS securities at a loss to meet liquidity demands and that its effort to raise fresh capital to shore up its impaired equity position was unsuccessful. Providing this data on the blockchain would not have not prevented the run. 

Even as one who regularly shills the blockchain - e.g. Blockchain Loyalty Programs - Sizzling Or Fizzling? - I find this article to be a very lame shill.