Note to subscribers. I publish a daily payments brief that is separate from my blog. Today’s brief is below as a sample. My blogs are deep. This is a laundry list across payments, identity, regulatory, advertising, agentic, AI, stablecoin… Registration is free if interested. Click on Newsletter on top nav of my site.
Continue readingThe Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 (H.R. 3633) is the last hope for Stablecoin issuers to save rewards. While the bill passed the House with a strong bipartisan vote on July 17, 2025, its progress has stalled in the Senate (as of Feb 2028) with intense disagreements regarding the regulation of stablecoin “rewards” and yield-like incentives.
Continue readingExec Summary (3 pages of bullets below)
The politics and incentives around these device graphs are very complex because they define how risk is managed and controlled. Today, Merchants (and their partners) are the leaders because they own the risk (100% in the US, 50% in the EU). Today’s blog is a recap of the politics and the forces driving perfect authentication, and how this would profoundly impact the politics and the competitive positions of key payment stakeholders.
Continue readingBank Payment Strategy in the World of Agentic and Stablecoin
Stripe’s recent moves are massive and will solve stablecoin acceptance (globally). When (and if) a consumer champion goes all in on stablecoin we will see change in payment innovation akin to the “age of enlightenment”. What are banks to do?
Cards are the most profitable banking product in the history of retail banking, and the power of banking is unlocked within the networks that link them (blog). While the power of banking is unlocked in networks, network innovation is like herding cats as each stakeholder works to protect their existing investments and competitive advantage (see Network Innovation).
US Payment Infrastructure is in the midst of completing a major renovation.
Let me preempt the #1 question most of you are about to ask “are card volumes at risk”? Nope, why on earth would banks want to walk away from the most profitable retail banking product in the history of man (see Future of Retail Banking)!?
Frank Young – Contributor
What are banks talking about this week? How did Apple’s announcement impact them? While 15bps on 2% of eCom GDV is a nuisance, 15bps on 15% of eComm GDV is an earthquake.
My #1 favorite new banking service in the US. Well done Akoya, TCH and member banks.
Continue readingIt’s hard to believe I’ve been writing about payment tokenization for 11 yrs. Tokenization is an overloaded term with multiple definitions. Last week McKinsey wrote a fantastic article on crypto tokenization, this note is about the tokenization of card numbers (PAN to DPAN) performed by network tokenization services like Visa Tokenization Service (VTS) and Mastercard Digital Enablement Service (MDES).
This week the US DOJ opened a probe into network tokenization services (Bloomberg). The specifics of the probe are not known
Short 4 page blog
I’ve written heavily on payments, trust networks and identity. Today I’m providing an example of how UPI, powered by UIDAI’s centralized identity, is creating a new cannon for next-generation payment networks and trust.
I believe that mobile platforms are well placed to learn their lessons in India and create a new phone based network agnostic identity platform that will drive a significant change to payments, the internet and how we manage trust with counterparties.