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If a system makes it too easy to impersonate, then consumers can't be blamed. If an institution chooses a low friction / higher risk system, they should also bear the burden. Cost/ benefit tradeoff.

This is quite established now - extremely hard to produce another PayPal or Revolut, and extremely hard to replicate the economies of scale of big banks. Partnerships seem to make the most sense.

API driven ecosystem disruption started with the Internet in the late 90s, and is here to stay. Any bank that wishes to stay relevant must start investing in this area not as a compliance play, but as a strategic initiative - either defensive or offensive - depending on the bench strength. It does not mean going overboard as sustained negative ROI will blow up at some point. It does mean continuously experimenting to find new revenue opportunities via the API channel.

It is quite interesting to see the banks advocate for this since they are most likely to suffer if cryptocurrency becomes widely used. It will require them to evolve beyond just stores of money to new products

That part isn't really all that problematic. The key problem is the supply of this 'stablecoin'. Will Libra continued to be issued as long as fiat money can be deposited, or is there a finite supply of Libra? If the latter, who controls how much is released. If truly a derivative currency that is pegged to the basket, how does one prevent unilateral devaluation of a component of the basket from destabilizing the 'stablecoin'? ECU required significant monetary controls on the way to Euro. 

It would be nice to get a breakdown of the impact by the risk tiers and the types of SCA employed. That would be super useful in informing the future direction for the payments UX.

Balancing security with privacy is a classic data minimization problem - best accomplished via cross industry partnership with the government

Well said! Who would dictate the number and amount of Libra released into the market?

Will nation states willingly cede monetary policy to SHC? How easy would it be carry out monetary expansion or contraction and who would govern those policies for SHC? Left to itself with finite circulation, it could have the same restrictive effect as the gold standard.

The success of V/ MC duopoly is in its revenue model, and universal identity/ trust. The back-end payment linkage will be toothless without incentives.