Short Blog – Follow Up to Last Week’s FedNow Update
I’ve got 4 blogs in queue with Part 5 – Future of Retail Banking coming next week. I’ve been asked to expand beyond my pro-network bent into areas like FedNow, PayPal, Stripe and Asia… etc and I will oblige. For today, drilling down on FedNow’s opportunity and the key barriers for “break out growth” (expanding on the last 2 bullets within 22 Feb FedNow blog). Feedback appreciated.
I hope to finish part 2 – Power of Bank Networks tomorrow (12-15 pages). In the meantime I have to recap a few key developments this week.
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Friday I was a tad “let down” in the Sionic/TCH/MX release of Pay-by-Bank. Per my blog on Google/TCH launch and Google P2P I was anticipating something much bigger. To be clear I firmly believe that TCH is working on an “ApplePay Competitor”, which will entail TCH tokens inside of Google’s phone, but this will be 3-6 months out. Per the blogs above, I see neither pay-by-bank nor TCH Tokens in Google Pay as a threat to V/MA.
Today I thought I would drill down into “pay by bank”, the dynamics of why it works in some markets, and why I see little threat to V/MA in replacing core cards in eCom or at POS.
© Starpoint LLP, 2022. No part of this site, blog.starpointllp.com, may be reproduced in whole or in part in any manner without the permission of the copyright owner.
A highly technical “what if” scenario involving a long-sought after change by top US card issuers. I’m fortunate to have the exec teams of just about every payment network, processor and FinTech read this blog. I have 3 main drivers for writing today:
Note I DO NOT think this scenario is likely, but rather possible (30% probability). Historical context is key and the only reason I’m spending time on this today is that 27 bank CEOs have been discussing this for over 10 yrs.
Very short Blog – Recapping a few tweet streams.
I think FedNow is a great effort to provide an open alternative to TCH’s RTP. I’ve spoken with, and consulted for, the KC fed on a number of occasions and provided my input to the FedNow service back in 2013. Per my blog last week the survey result from the Fed’s efforts found “emergency bill payment” as the top consumer use. Paying someone faster brings on risk. The Fed depends on banks to manage risk and price that risk. As a former banker running payments at 2 of the largest banks I have a view here.
Sorry for typos
My good friend Dave Birch wrote a piece in Forbes today on Account to Account transfer threat to V/MA. I wanted to provide an alternate view. This will likely be a multi part blog.. today I’m starting with the consumer and the merchant (from a US perspective).
From Bloomberg yesterday 16 July
Why is this a great thing for Square and DeFi?
#1 Today DeFi and Crypto in Commerce (POS and eCom) are in need of a “core” that can manage either compliance and connections to existing financial services, or operate in critical mass with minimal interaction to banks (ex – custody, exchange, platform, consortium-diem).