First Reactions
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The DOJs complaint was formalized last night
CCCA (Credit Card Competition Act) has been a topic of late, with questions such as: will the bill pass? What will be the consequences? Who will win?
Today I’m providing a brief update on where the CCCA bill stands, and my view on industry consequences in the unlikely event that it passes (previous blog July 2022). The summary? I don’t think the bill will pass. What elected representative wants to be seen killing consumer card rewards in an election year? If CCCA does pass, it will take 6 yrs to implement and the consequences will be borne by Issuers (and consumers) with some added volatility to V/MA. V/MA win when interchange is reduced (ex EU IFR in 2015 – see blog).
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The CFPB issued a new report last week on the impact that Apple/Google have on payments. Some key excerpts below
I see this as round 4 for Apple. The first rounds were fought with mobile operators and their GSMA TSM vision. The next with Australia (2016) then EU (2019). I find the timing of this report very interesting. As CFPB report came just months after US Issuers pushed Apple to eliminate its 15bps fee (a fee they voluntarily signed up for). I wonder if the CFPB knew that the Issuers collectively sought to eliminate the fee, or that they would like to expand PAZE to NFC/POS in order to lock a new wallet app which would DECREASE BANK COMPETITION (and cut out Apple).
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.