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Brett,

I think what you are saying makes a lot of sense and indeed security to one side, making a payment as simple as possible takes away as much "hassle" as possible.

That said, it also perhaps makes it a bit "too easy". When you check your bank balance or credit card statement (or whatever) at the end of a month and see you spent much more than you thought you had - you might want some of that hassle back again. In other words - people still like some level of control over their spending. Making it too easy might not be such a good thing.

A guess another thing that occured to me reading this was where there's a dispute. There's no signature, no PIN. If I say "it wasn't me in the taxi" how can anyone really prove it was? I'm sure you've thought about this - but it's not immediately obvious.

Anyway - great article.

Jane,

I too had a good look over the paper. I feel sorry for you.

I agree there's a definite "political" slant to it. Especially with references to "the last government" and "the then-government".

If this is all triggered by the fact that the Payments Council got it wrong in trying to phase out cheques - so they should go. I wonder what that says about the government itself and all its political u-turns? Perhaps they should go as well?

All of that said, the creation of a new "regulatory body" shows political interference. Will this new body really be independent? The Financial Services Industry is one of the most powerful and important sectors in the UK. Also it has quite a few "high earners" who might want to fund the various political parties to "pull a few strings" behind the scenes.

Also you point about Luxembourg is valid. I know that PayPal already has a banking license - issued in Luxembourg.

Just like fraud finding security "loopholes", if there's a reason to sidestep or avoid regulation, given sufficient financial incentive - I'm sure there's a way of doing so. Be that moving operations to Luxembourg or making them virtual "in the cloud".

I think that trying to strong-arm the industry into following licensing terms and bureaucratic regulations will not encourage innovation. Quite the opposite.

I only see the likes of Metro Bank potentially benefiting from something like this.

It will be interesting to see where the debate takes us, but as you said "Industry consultation came out clearly in favour of the Payments Strategy Board so equally clearly the government has decided to do something entirely different".

So no matter what is commented back on this "consultation" - will it really make any difference or just be ignored in favour of a decision that's already been made from an ivory tower?

I think on this one it's a bit like a court case. You can find articles to support the fact that contactless is growing in importance...

https://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=24924

... and articles to support the fact that the "boom" in contactless may not be as big as some people think...

https://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=24884

I know there's a sense that in the future we will live in a "connected world" with intelligent televisions, fridges and everything else. Who knows? The future is hard to predict - though we may still play the lottery now and again.

I do agree, however, with the fact that the technology needs to be solving a problem. If we're talking about long queues at Starbucks - the issue is not how fast it takes to make the payment, but how fast they can make an expresso.