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Nick - try telling that to your average state primary in South London! 

Charities and services for old people are often mentioned, in regards to the abolition of checks. But anyone with a small child will know that most schools only take cash or checks for the wide range of school trips, uniforms, sports, photos etc... that you have to shell out for throughout the year.

Wouldn't the government be able to help state school migrate off of cash and checks?

I've been at the MasterCard booth at Cartes in Paris most of the afternoon. They are claiming not have anyone on site to comment on this, "because it is being dealt with out of the US". 

However, I was told MasterCard would have a statement "in 20 minutes" (about two hours ago). Will check back at the end of the day.

Off-the-record comment from a MasterCard person at the booth "Please can something else happen today..."

Computer World (and Twitter) are saying the Bank is Bank of America. 

Who wants to place a bet that it's Goldman Sachs?

Many thanks Bo! We at Finextra offer up the Community as a service and we hope most of you take advantage of the blogging, networking and commenting features offered as part of that service. 

We are also looking at ways to bring our dedicated Twitter followers closer into the Community as well. So stay tuned. 

And thank you Bo for being such as regular and prolific blogger yourself!

I know! I am sure the LSE will go running to Basildon, real-time data in a welcome basket, and just hand it over to Nyse. ;-)

So, it's looks like we may have 'competing' consolidated tapes in Europe. How will that work then? Isn't that the opposite of what the industry wants (needs)?

I completely agree with you Gary - that looking to FIX when developing the consolidated tape would be a good road for the financial industry to go down. It's an established standard that most of the industry (well, the sell-side anyway) already uses. 

However, I have heard from a few people (I'm a journalist, we hear things) that there are some on the sell-side that do not think going down the FIX route is the best option. FIX is ubiquitous on the sell-side; on the buy-side not so much. The tier one buy-side firms all rely on the XML-based FIX, but when you move down the food chain to the 'Mom & Pop' fund managers - FIX is harder to find. 

When developing a consolidated tape for Europe there are political issues (isn't there always?) It can not be seen as a London-based, large investment bank initiative - and an embrace of FIX looks that that to some people. (And that is not even going into what Swift may feel about Europe going whole hog down the FIX route for the CT.)

Those 'political' issues may out weigh any potential benefits of FIX. 

There are three things you can count on in life: death, taxes, and an annual row over CUSIP fees!