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. 

• A SCATHING report from Senator Warren titled “How Consumers Defrauded on Zelle are Left High and Dry by the Banks that Created It” There goes the Zelle Brand. Glad to see banks acting on my February recommendations to protect consumers and their brands. This is just a small taste of what happens in real-time payments. This is a political hit job on banks. This “fraud” is not bank fraud at all.. It is acting on consumer requests. See my blog for more. 
• Visa and Mastercard stocks are getting hit as Senator Durbin attempts to add Durbin II to the Defense bill. Read this ABA article. Lobbyists see a 5% chance that this will stick. Banks need to move quickly to create consumer awareness with a very simple message “this will kill card rewards”. What Senator wants to take part in such a scheme during an election year? My blog on topic is Durbin 2 – Short Update 
• Enforcing Durbin 1 in eCommerce. FED just issued final rule that requires dual routing in eCom debit. I see minimal impact to V GDV (<1%) for 4 reasons 1) limited eCom debit 2) only the largest merchants use dual routing 3) Visa DPS footprint AND Interlink 4) Top merchants have been doing this for 3+ yrs (ex WMT). For an overview see my 2011 blog, for how it will work in eCom see this article. 
• CFPB Releases Report on Buy Now, Pay Later. See blog from Federal Reserve of Atlanta. The report shows that this is a real credit product that is behaving itself. If I were to add anything it would be the impact of incremental conversions. Interesting to note the repayment methods. 

• Also in keeping with BNPL, a great WSJ article on SouthAsia’s BNPL performance. 
• US Department of Treasury Financial Stability Oversight Council Chaired by Yellen declares cryptocurrencies could threaten financial system – WSJ. 
• The FT article that is still causing a stir “How JPMC’s plan to kill credit cars split the bank”. I addressed this in my blog US Payments Environment – Something Big – 5 Part Series 
• Visa-Mindgeek. What a load of crap. A federal judge in California issued a ruling that Visa will remain a defendant in the class action lawsuit  for approximately 100 victims of sexual abuse against Canadian porn giant MindGeek. The class action attorneys are BrownRudnick (see post). Al Kelly posted a fantastic response to this lunacy in July. As we all know Visa is a messaging network, never moving funds, but providing the instructions for banks to move funds between themselves. Acquiring Banks have the legal and network mandated role of ensuring the business of the merchants they acquire for. Inclusion of Visa shows a complete lack of understanding of the role payment networks play in authorization or merchant acquiring. 
• My calendar is filling up for Money2020. If you would like to schedule a time, please write us at info@starpointllp.com.