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How does a product that only supports payments between two HSBC customers in two different countries become a competitor of TransferWise? Unless I'm missing something, I've used a similar product from Citi over 10 years ago. 

The definitions of various entities that I provided in my blog post https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/18307/why-banks-will-never-catch-up-with-fintechs may help reduce some of the confusion between Fintechs and Fincumbents.

Total BS posturing by Which? Will it next call for banks to reimburse victims of pick-pocketing?

Having been involved in the implementation of TARGET2 at a Top 5 UK Bank, I was shocked to read the headline. In the days of ransomware and all that, it's nice to know that cybercrime has been ruled out as the root cause. Back in the day, I'm guessing we wouldn't have been as relieved to note that the outage is perhaps just down to mundane things like the failure of a new release or patch! 

For readers in India and other countries where "Cashback" refers to a post-purchase discount that's paid directly into their payment instrument (say credit card), cashback in UK means something else: Consumers reach the checkout, pay with credit card or debit card for their purchase plus a relatively small amount like GBP 25 and get GBP 25 in cash from the attendant. This helps them avoid a separate trip to an ATM to withdraw small amounts of cash.

The way I understand the proposed new rule, customers can walk into a store and swipe / dip / tap their credit card or debit card and walk out with, say, GBP 25 without making any purchase in the store.

Well, a lot of people wondered why Google paid $1.5B for YouTube and Facebook, $1B for Instagram; and YT and IG are reportedly worth $150B and $100B respectively today! There's a reason why those guys make the big bucks:)  

From what I understood of the brilliant Stratechery article linked in my abovementioned tweet, Visa acquired Plaid to gain early mover advantage in Open Finance / Interbank Rails enabled by Plaid, which complements the Card Rails owned by Visa.

Re. "consumers whose data was unknowingly captured by Plaid" in the previous comment, that's not true. Consumers very well submitted their data knowingly. And it's not just Plaid. Nearly 10M bank account holders submitted similar data to PFM pioneer MINT 10 years ago. #GoFigure.  

Earlier this year, I asked if what Plaid did was phishing and wondered why banks didn't stop Plaid already. I now have the answers: (1) It is phishing (2) Had they nipped Plaid in the bud, banks wouldn't be able to claim damages, which they now are able to.

All subscriptions I know of work via recurring debit to Credit Card or Debit Card or Bank Account or Mobile Phone Account. That's only 4 payment options.

Keen on knowing what exactly you mean by "one payment option" when you say "Avoid investing too heavily in one payment option." 

While there could be hundreds of brands of credit card, debit card, bank account, MNO and PSP, I don't recall seeing anything more than the aforementioned four payment options.

LOL "One of the firm's surveys found 75% of people would like to have access to data on how they spend their money, but only 40% said they were comfortable providing the information that could lead to that." is a nod to basic human behavior: People want fruits of the labor without the labor.

It also harkens back to the concept of Consent. 

3 years ago, I said on Open Banking: Consent is Key that opt-in rates will vary vastly depending on whether the consent question is worded by way of Feature (low) or Benefit (high). That's exactly what the latest study shows. 

Cashback of 3% is not on *their* but *my* highest spend category. It's possible that my second and third highest spend categories on which I get 2% and 1% cashback respectively turn out to be Venmo's highest MDR category on which it earns >=3%, so there's a source of revenue there. On top of that, there are fees and interest charges plus new sources of revenues like advertising fees off of credit card spends.

Of course, all this is relevant only if Venmo is under any obligation to have a profitable business model in the first place. That's not a given when scores of fintechs - among startups in other industries - enjoy skyhigh valuation despite making paltry revenues and whopping losses.