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This is great news. In a time when banks are struggling, great to see a challenger turning a profit. Valuation must be dramatically up, since turning a profit atm is a rare thing....

The connectivity is a small part of the issue. The challenge is more the membership and what that means in terms of collateral posted. As a FinTech, nor even most banks, I don't see one benefit of being directly connected to FPS. 

You need to focus on what your business proposition is, and being "directly connected" gives you nothing new, only additional costs. You are better off seeking a directly connected API that gives you all the same benefits of being directly connected, but without the hassle of being a direct participant...

A very interesting topic and one close to my heart.

The first thing is that digital identity does NOT mean an identity type document in digital fashion (like a passport). You should never have this because its too easy to then correlate users and identities together to target them. Let's face it, in certain parts of the world and human history shows that identity leads to targetting, so at a principle level, we must rememebr that identity needs to be related to identification for what purpose. An identity is therefore a domain of various identities that mean differnt things to different people.

Once we have established that understanding, we must therefore make sure that we dont have "custodians" of digital identity. Banks are in no position to do this, nor is any particular "sector" or company. Identity data is ours, it is our identiity and therefore the data and how it is used must be under our strict control. We are the custodians of that data and banks maybe somone we trust to use it. Nothing more.

Though there are strides making digitial identity frameworks across the UK and europe that assert and promote trust in digitial identity, the underlying financial infrastructure needs to dramatically change in terms of how "customers" are viewed and how "customer interactions" are triggered. Open Banking APIs are not scalable when we move to a world where the customer and their identtity is at the centre of interactions - so the entire underlying architecture, which many banks have just invested heavily, is already legacy when we look at digital ID. 

FinCrime is complex, and in this platform use case - with CBDCs being used for payment system capabilities, while at the same time allowing people to "hold them" begs the question, who is performing the KYC? Access is very different to ownership - so you would not expect the regulated entities to perform robust KYC on account holders if the liability sits with the BoE in a CBDC.....

There are some fabulous use cases and arguments for CBDCs where such issues are solved or not problems at all. We need to focus on these to bring CBDCs to life, and then look at extended benefits iteratively over time. As ever, it seems we are trying to understand and biol the ocean all at once.....

Here maybe an example of why banks need to think about their technological positioning. Yes they want to be more technically competent, yes they want to innovate, but really, 600 engineers, that sounds like you should be leveraging tech companies more....

And here is a perfect example of why banks shouldnt "own" my data. This data should have been already in the hands of the customer - as customers we shouldnt depend on an API all the time to gain access to such trivial data.....

As part of an effective open finance movement, this sort of data ownership and ongoing access needs to be addressed. There are innovative solutions out there, but we need open finance to embrace them and enforce them on financial organisations - as opposed to the continuation of data being "owned" by the financial institution and not the customer

Its a nice concept, but do I want a centralised identity in this fashion, probably not, especialy since is this really adding any additional value to the ID i can get from open banking or by the simple fact that the the person has supplied a specific payment card? After all, to have the payment card i would have had to have gone though certain KYC which includes age verification etc ....

Its always a shame when you see founders leaving a business. Unfortunately its becoming a theme in financial services, with the companies "losing" their way somewhat once a founder steps away...

How is this even news or a thing? Surely better security measures tackles fraud - and the need to set limits would proabably relate to my financial well-being....

Just to add, if a bank goes bust and has EMI funds on its books, these are treated as bankers funds. This then leaves the EMI without the funds even though it maybe still solvent. Insurance is the only fail-safe at this point.