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FDIC deposit insurance distorts the free market and introduces moral hazard - the $250k limit is way in excess of average deposits, giving unearned risk free returns to wealthy individuals and businesses. Small banks subsidize big banks by paying disproportionatly more. Also, big banks are far more likely to get favorable treatment, including bailouts - depositors over the $250k limit in the tiny First National Bank of Lindsay received nothing this year, wheareas all SVB depositors were made good in full, go figure - it's all political.

The FDIC has funds worth only 1.21% of its exposure and is in no position to bailout depositors in the event of a major bank collapse. It is more a political scheme than an insurance scheme, to insulate large banks from market downsides.

Instead of compulosry FDIC contributions, banks should be allowed to make their own, non-compulsory, private insurance arrangements - the market and consumers will be much better off. 

This will be interesting - I have always suspected that competition in retail payments in Norway must be limited, for example, Vipps charges as high as 2.99% + 1NOK for online payments there. In Denmark, using the same platform (owned by Vipps) the cost is 1.49% + 1DKK. Even that is high, in a truly competitive market the cost of any retail payment goes below 1%.

The only competition in credit and debit card fees is in the network fees that card issuers (usually banks) pay to access the card networks, dominated by Visa and Mastercard. Card issuers have to decide whether to issue Visa or Mastercard cards, or one of the smaller card network brands.

Interchange fees distort this competition, as they are paid by the acquirer, recouped from the merchant and set by the network. The interchange an issuer receives is usually a multiple of the network fee they pay, so naturally they go for the card network which sets the highest interchange (there are other, lesser factors such as incentive refunds networks may give to the issuer).

There is no competition for card networks on the acquiring side, merchants have little choice but to accept at least Visa and Mastercard and their acquirer needs to pay the card network fees, at whatever level they are set, for all the networks they use. Acquirers' only incentive is to scale their business to maximise their card network volumes to get better network fees which are typically tiered on volume.

The cap on interchange fees is a good start in limiting the distortion to competition but the PSR should be more radical and eliminate the competition distortion to encourage growth in other networks, alternative payment methods and innovation - i.e. ban interchange fees altogether, allow networks to charge whatever network (access) fee they wish but ensure that the network fee for acquirers is no higher than that for issuers.

This is a ridiculous initiative - measuring carbon emissions from a payment is impossible to do accurately and impossible to verify, the results will be bogus and meaningless. However, it will create a cottage industry of grifters adding costs and bureaucracy to payment companies, stifling innovation and harming merchants and consumers. The PA should focus on what is important to the payments industry not on what is fashionable among the unproductive.

this is incomprehensible - can anyone explain what a RSN is, what it does and why it is needed?

How does digital id protect from fraud? This is often stated as a truism unsupported by facts or logic. The risk is fraudsters will create fraudulent digital ids or get hold of them fraudulently and amplify their fraud with them.

there is still a huge amount to do to get even the basics right - for example, how do you check real-time on a call, or at least soon after if you suspect you are being called by a police or bank  impersonator?

The Nexus specs state that liquidity provision is the responsibility of the FX providers - so the most challenging part of cross-border payments is out of scope of the scheme! 

This may be designed to goad the UK banks into action, but there is another way - Fintechs.

Already, the BoE has opened up access to RTGS reserve accounts for non-bank FIs with a big  impact on the expansion of the Faster Payments service and competition in retail payment services (without creating any additional systemic risk to the UK financial system).

Rather than introducing a retail CBDC, a better approach is to introduce a wholesale CBDC, which in effect is another form of reserves, managed through a shared ledger and programmable platform instead of with a RTGS - and allow Fintechs to develop their own retail payment services backed by wCBDC (excluding Big Tech to avoid concentrations of market power). Innovation will take hold rapidly.

Why doesn't the FCA use these powers to rein in the social media platforms that allow scams to be promoted on their platforms?