Innovation in Networks – Part 4

The Strategic Innovation Era

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This blog has been sitting at 80% for almost 3 months. Sorry for the delay. This was a 30 page blog that I slimmed down to 16. Thus the long summary section. This blog is focused on networks and their ability to: 1) internally charter their own evolution, 2) grow network of supporting stakeholders, 3) stimulate network growth, and 4) encourage investment/innovation. Why read this? Payment innovation is set to grow Global GDV by 50% (above baseline) over the next 5-7 yrs. Today’s blog is a basis for this hypothesis.

A very long blog with 3 page summary below

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Part 2 – The Power of Bank Networks

The Bull Case for V/MA (24 pages). 

© 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.

Part 1 – US Payments Environment covered the complexity of the US payment environment and the challenges faced by top banks in modernizing their systems (where all systems live forever). There are many types of payments: bill payments, A2A, P2P, wires.. Today the focus is on how banks intermediate commerce. Banks MUST have networks as every bank can’t connect to every consumer/merchant. Effective Bank networks (aka rails) are NOT a commodity service, but one that allows the banks to leverage their unique ability to assume risk.

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Apple – #1 Payment Innovator

As Apple is set to launch the iPhone 14 today, I was thinking about the significance of ApplePay’s innovations to V/MA and how these innovations benefit the entire network of merchants and consumers. Making payments easy is hard… Apple is the lead “innovator” within the V/MA networks at the consumer touchpoint (with Google, Samsung, PayPal and others in the mix). Their “wallet” and branded integration into both POS AND mCom is unrivaled and represents 93% of all mobile wallet payments in the US (2021).

This 2021 Pulse Network Debit Whitepaper provides the best public view on performance (US Only), with TPV CAGR over 50%. Quite frankly, when it comes to mobile payments, it’s silly to talk about anything else by ApplePay in the US

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Building Networks and “Openness”

8 Dec 2011 I’ve been reading some off beat stuff lately. One book “Weak Links: Stabilizers of Complex Systems from Proteins to Social Networks” was very thought provoking. As Mark Stefik (PARC Fellow) said ‘Something magical happens when you bring together a group of people from different disciplines with a common purpose.’ The combination of people, experience and approaches often leads to unexpected consequences. As an engineer I like to solve problems.. I usually learn more from mistakes than I do from successes… but it is the learning that is fun. As an investor and entrepreneur I don’t like making mistakes… my preference in the start up environment is to have the learning cycle counted in minutes and days (vs customers and capital). I was speaking with a US Central Banker last month and the concept of “openness” was discussed. A hypothesis was laid out by the Fed “Mobile payments are not taking off because of a lack of common standards”.  The Fed team is very good, the best way to encourage a good dialog is to lay out something radical; as for this hypothesis I disagreed completely. As stated in my numerous blogs: history has clearly showed that closed systems must form before open ones.  I also told the Fed that the problem in US mobile payment IS NOT lack of standards but lack of a value proposition to consumers and retailers. In other words existing payment instruments solve all of my problems.. mobile payment simply does not add additional value (in isolation) compared with existing products (See Mobile Advertising Battle). In order to stimulate a change in behavior (merchant and consumer) there must be a strong value proposition. Two years ago I discussed the implications for broad payment standards in SEPA: Chicken or the Egg and in March of this year I outlined how SEPA has depressed payment innovation in the EU. Given all of the chaos in NFC at the moment, I woke up this morning asking myself what is the “right amount” of openness and standards? How do successful networks form and mature? What are successful “open” networks? What is the first “open” standard you think of ? TCP/IP? Linux? Java? RosettaNet? EDI? Open Network? Internet? GSM? US Interstate system? SEPA? The Weak Links book opened my eyes to many new concepts, one was on how affinity influences network creation, and another on how few open networks exist in Nature. Networks form around a function and open networks are not necessarily the most efficient.
Scale-free distribution (completely open networks) is not always the optimal solution to the requirement of cost efficiency. .. in small world networks, building and maintaining links between network elements requires energy…. [in a world with limited resources] a transition will occur toward a star network [pg 75] where one of a very few mega hubs will dominate the whole system. The star network resembles dictatorships in social networks.
The network forms around a function and other entities are attracted to this network (affinity) because of the function of both the central orchestrator and the other participants. Of course we all know this as the definition of Network Effects. Obviously every network must deliver value to at least 2 participants. Networks resist change because of this value exchange within the current network structure, in proportion to their size and activity. Within the EU, SEPA undertook a rewrite of network rules and hoped that existing networks would go away or that a new (stronger) SEPA network would form around its core focus areas (SCT, SDD, SCF, ..). It was a “hope” because the ECB has no enforcement arm. In other words there was a political challenge associated with ECB’s (and EPC specifically) ability to force an EU level change on domestically regulated banking industry.. given that SEPA rules destroyed much value in existing bank networks, the political task was no small effort. We have seen similar attempts (and results) when governments attempt to institute major change in networks (Internet NetNeutrality v. Priority Routing, US Debit Card Interchange, …) Mobile Payments Standard? If we take a look at today’s payment networks what are the biggest problems to be solved? I have a perspective, but its certainly biased. How about payment routing and speed? These seem to be common merchant and consumer concerns. Keeping with an internet analogy, can you imagine if there were no DNS servers to route IP traffic? Every router would have to keep the directory for the entire internet not only of the final destination, but also the most effective route to forward traffic. What if the internet were not indexed? No ability to find information (thanks Google for fixing this).  In the payments environment, the central assets of Visa and MA is 1) A Directory and 2) the rule that EVERY participant must route traffic through them (with a new PIN debit exception in US). Outside of card transaction’s banks maintain their own directory for routing retail and commercial payments; this is called “least cost routing”.  A key bank service I would propose (note: I’m not the originator of this idea) is a universal directory service mapping e-mail, phone and account numbers.  In Australia, the banks have this today run by my friends at Cardlink and completed under project Mambo. In the US, The Clearing House (TCH) has had the UPick service completed for a number of years.. without much interest. My thought here, is that rather than facilitate a EU mistake in mandating a change in all rules.. decrease the switching costs between networks so that market forces can take hold. I’m not proposing to take the directory public.. but at least give regulated entities equal access. In Australia the driver was to decrease bank switching costs, also note that Australia has no Signature debit.. just as in Canada.  A common directory could also follow rule that non-regulated institutions could not hold account data (or card number).. Just as I don’t have to know my Bank’s IP address.. I could use another identifier (email, mobile, …) for online transactions. The danger for banks is that this would certainly open up the world of least cost routing to non-banks. Payments would become “dumb pipes”.. which is perhaps what it should be. Mobile payments is certainly not critical government infrastructure. So what is Government’s proper role? Consumer data protection, transparency, regulatory requirements, equal participation/access..  ? I don’t know the answer. I like the idea of the Government creating a model service for R&D purposes.. perhaps based on Fedwire and letting non-banks have access to it… I also like the idea of a common directory. ISIS For 2.5 years I’ve been writing about ISIS.. I’ve always have been a huge advocate.. until lately. What has changed? My position, and that of retailers, is that today’s payment networks are heavily tilted in favor of the banks. The opportunity I originally saw for ISIS was constructing a new merchant friendly network that was an “extension” of the current mobile network which the carriers run (The original business case for ISIS is outlined in ISIS: Moving Payments from Rail to Air). Keeping with my theme of openness and standards how is ISIS creating a platform for other to invest in? What value is an ISIS mobile payment to a retailer? Yesterday’s blog talked about the complex supply chain necessary to deliver on NFC. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong about NFC technology.. it is a very well defined specification. But it is complex.. if it was a NEW WAY of doing payments (or better yet commerce) perhaps it should have started a little less ambitiously. The team seems as if it prudently sought to reduce risk, but it also gave up on a central element to its value proposition. My analogy for today is that ISIS project is like Vanderbilt’s skipping steam and going straight for high speed mag lev in 1880…. While the entire country was growing at a 10x pace and he had no right of way.. Big projects are tough in normal times.. but mobile is changing at an unbelievably fast pace. Small focused projects are certainly lower risk when innovating at the cutting edge. Everything is changing.. how could anyone architect an open system in such a fast changing environment? It would seem that technical standards like TCP/IP or GSM were successful because of their ubiquity and distributed control. They could be used by all to create different networks with different value propositions.. which incented millions of companies and consumers to invest.  I just don’t see how MNOs can create a business platform based on NFC. Their best shot may be to work with someone like Sequent Software to create an architecture for 1000s of applications to access secure element data.. instead of the one single CSAM wallet coming out in Pilot Dec 2012. Your thoughts are appreciated Previous Blogs (Nokia NFC Ecosystem, ISIS Ecosystem or Desert, Banks will win in Payments.. but WHICH ones?)

Payments Innovation in Europe

8 March 2011

Why do I like the Payments business? It is ubiquitous, sticky, with good margins and strong annuity revenue.

What do I hate about the payments business?

In the US, it is over regulated, concentrated, difficult to change and frustrating enigma driven by large FSIs with unlimited resources…. Within Europe the situation is little different.

After coming back from last week’s trip the Valley, I was attempting to develop an investment hypothesis on Europe, mobile, payments and innovation in general.

While Europe’s individual talent is second to none, and capital is plentiful, the European market is designed to resist change and thus impedes the development of early stage ideas and companies. Early stage companies can incubate within a single country but are challenged to expand beyond, due to complex regulatory and market dynamics. Navigating these dynamics causes early stage companies to develop more slowly, thus a requiring a higher risk premium on invested capital.

                   – Tom’s European Venture Capital Hypothesis

SEPA Overview 

(European colleagues can skip this section). 

SEPA and PSD (SEPA’s enabling legal framework) attempt to create harmonization of payment schemes across the EU (See SEPA Blog, and excellent PodCast). The result?  837 pages of detailed and contradictory EU law with no business incentive. SEPA has been plagued with delays and issues, as should be expected given that there was no business incentive nor a PAN EU regulator to enforce it. SEPA Credit Transfers and SEPA Card Framework have been in place for a few years (2008). While the SEPA framework commoditizes payments, and while this is consumer friendly, there is no business incentive to for large banks to implement it (see Barclay’s consumer support on SCT).  The same can be said for the SEPA Card Framework (See MA’s Self Assessment). The main points from ECB’s regular status report:

  1. Banks must create greater awareness of SEPA, and must offer better products, based upon the SEPA infrastructure. Government should accelerate programs to adopt SEPA as the standard for its disbursements.
  2. The banking industry must commit to work together to remove obstacles which might compromise the Nov 1 2009 launch date of the SEPA Direct Debit. Debates on the launch date, the validity of existing DD mandates, and interchange fees must be closed out rapidly.
  3. Bank systems need to be improved to enable end-to-end straight-through-processing, originated by files submitted or by e-payment, e-invoicing, and m-payments.
  4. The ECB wants to see a target end date for migration to SEPA products, and for exiting out of older credit transfer and direct debit.
  5. The SEPA card framework in its current form has not yet delivered the reforms which the ECB wants. In particular, ECB wants to see a European card scheme emerging.
  6. The ECB perceives a lack of consistency in card standards. It wants to ensure that a clear set of standards are adopted and promoted throughout the industry.
  7. A common, high level of security for Internet banking, card payments and online payments is needed.
  8. Clearing and settlement organizations in many countries have made good progress on SEPA, and several are upgrading from national to pan-European.
  9. The banking industry, and its representative body, the EPC have not sufficiently involved other stakeholders.

 SEPA’s Impact on Innovation

European harmonization is a fantastic objective, but translating EU guidance in to country law, with each country’s banking regulators responsible for interpretation and guidance, is problematic. This becomes even more difficult when Banks (who were not included in the SEPA design) have an inverse adoption incentive. An analogy in the telecom world would be telling the land line carrier that the must open up the switch to anyone that wants it at no cost.. and they have to assume all of the risk and operational responsibility.

Early stage companies and “payment innovators” are left with a complex set of constraints.

  • Dependent on local national relationships to launch a product,
  • SEPA creates harmonization, but country specific laws and regulatory guidance are unique
  • ECB initiatives (ex. See ELMI) create opportunities for non-bank participation in payments,  but SEPA has removed all margin from the business

So in Europe we see the consequences of over regulation.  While SEPA was designed to increase competition and create new European schemes, there are few business models capable of supporting investment. Hence Europe is not the place to start a retail payments business.  Hence Asia, LATAM  and Canada are all great places to start a payments business (my picks: PH, HK/China, Brazil, Malaysia, SG, Colombia, Indonesia and New Zealand).

Europe and Advertising

I don’t have time to finish the thought here. For those of you that read my blog you know I’m very enthused about the prospect for advertising to be a future payments revenue driver. Unfortunately for the EU, consumer privacy regulations (and subsequent “tracking” issues) are the most onerous in the world. In Germany for instance, my Citi team was forced purge the web log of IP addresses every 30 minutes.. for our own customers. The point here is that we could not even maintain loosely correlated consumer information in regulated accounts. Google has similar problems today (see Das ist verboten).

Where is the EU opportunity?

Where there is an intersection of: low margin payments, businesses with frequent cross border (within EU) transactions, without need or desire for banking relationship. MoneyBookers is an excellent example of this model in gaming.

Other possible  investment drivers relate to when payment transaction infrastructure is a commodity:

Arbitrage – Move intelligence to new regions or countries where the cost of maintaining it is lower

Aggregation – Combine formerly isolated pieces of dedicated infrastructure intelligence into a large pool of shared infrastructure that can be provided over a network

Rewiring – Connect islands of intelligence by creating a common information backbone

Reassembly – Reorganize pieces of intelligence from diverse sources into coherent, personalized packages for customers

 Thoughts appreciated.

SEPA: Chicken or the Egg?

4 January 2010

I was reading an update on SEPA : New Alliances Required to Tip the Market. The report gave me new perspective on how challenging it is to change a networked business. This challenge is exacerbated by the ‘well intended’ EU political compromises in SEPA (specifically) and EU regulation of retail finance (more broadly). Clearly “payment networks” can benefit from innovation, but as Juergen correctly states “In a network industry, cost reductions and/or additional revenues that can be realized by applying the new standards have to exceed the network effects currently realized with the old standard”.

SEPA is struggling to resolve issues in cost/benefit allocation given the slow growth and adoption for SDD and SCT. The greater growth in SEPA Cards Framework can be attributed to the “control” and investment from Visa/MA as they manage compliance (and marketing) or the new SCF brand. An excerpt from the report above:

Key strategic decisions have to be made almost simultaneously in organisations that are in competition with each other, follow different strategies and have different abilities to innovate or prepare for an industry change. Only if consensus on a new business model can be reached – among stakeholders who represent significant market shares and hold key positions in the industry– will it be possible to generate the synergies promised by SEPA. As already described, the cross-border business within SEPA represents only a small share of the payments market. The dominant national standards, which all would have to be replaced by the new SEPA standards, are built around national market requirements.

International banks (for example, Deutsche Bank) have separate organisational units in several European countries that run their own national payments engines. They maintain different payment infrastructures in Europe. Modifications in response to new compliance requirements (for example, money laundering or new requirements of the PSD) create several similar projects [for this single bank]..

The costs for SEPA (estimated at €10B) fall heavily on the banks, and the benefits (ex. e-invoicing, cross border competition in payment products, …etc) are expected to be realized by the consumers of bank payment services (with and estimate €7B revenue hit to banks). Fortunately for the Banks, in 2002 the approach decided on by the EPC was to create SEPA in a market-driven and self regulated process.

The over arching goal of SEPA is to make the EU a single market on “payment” par with the U.S. Perhaps the best way to start is not by incenting changes to “payments”, but to open the EU retail banking market. (Think of the US banks operating under a Fed charter).  “All banking is local” can be the mantra ascribed to the EU today, with each country maintaining tight regulatory control over domestic financial institutions (i.e. M&A and Liquidity). Significant market forces could be unleashed when local banks can operate throughout the EU, and a German consumer can seek the best rate and apply for an account at a “Spanish” bank.  Today the regulatory hurdles for this retail competition are significant.

The EU, ECB and the EPC started with payment standards and “infrastructure” as it did not alienate any of the existing participants (market driven.. .not mandatory). What we have is the fruit of this compromise, standards for payments across the EU without the ability for companies to compete for business across the EU domain. The unrealized value of the “SEPA Innovations” are thereby constrained by the market in which banking operates. Perhaps integrating EU retail financial markets would be a better first step. This “openness” would certainly provide an attractive carrot for bank led investment in common payments. Which comes first? The Chicken or the Egg?

See data here

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