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Awesome post! 

I've known for a long time that Acquirer Risk is a big deal and limits the number of Merchants to whom Acquirer Banks issue Merchant Accounts, ergo the sweetspot leveraged by PayPal and Square / Block for online and instore credit card payments.

But, until I read your post, I've never really understood why.

With 13M customers and $100B deposits, Marcus is one of the most successful neobanks ever. However, being a division of a bank, it needs to operate according to the traditional PLBS business model, and therefore cannot make losses for too long. This is unlike fintechs, which are VC backed, and are under no pressure to make profits in the short, medium or (lately) even long term.

Exhibit A for BNPL Ain't Killing Banks. It's Making Them Rich. 

LOL ICYMI it's a clickable link to a page on the website of NCR the company that provides a list of countries where A2A RTP is operational.

@ArshadNoor: Yep. NCR.

LOL if only these protestors had used Reddit WSB, their call to Ban PayPal might have fared better!

Banks have not rushed to implement A2A RTP systems anywhere in the world.

Let me quote from the post entitled Banks Have Not Lost The UPI Plot on my company blog:

QUOTE

By transferring money instantly from payor’s account to payee’s account, Account-to-Account Real Time Payments like UPI eliminate float.

Since float is a key source of revenues for banks, you won’t find banks rushing headlong into A2A RTP systems anywhere in the world.

Where national A2A RTPs exist – that’s around 40 countries – they came about as a result of regulatory diktat.

India is no exception. The Indian regulator was easily able to achieve forced distribution of UPI among banks since 70% of the banking industry is owned by the government.

ENDQUOTE

I'm guessing Canada is no exception, either.

OMG 18 years and still counting. I can't think of another technology that has NOT been implemented for so long.    

LOL!

In ca. 2007, my colleague told me that ISO 20022 was just around the corner and sought my approval to enable our SWIFT Gateway product for the new standard.

I'd like to think it was my Waiting for Godot feeling but, even if it was procrastination, I vetoed the investment. 

Ergo I escaped the stainless steel dustbin investment:). 

Great post!

Much of the technical details are way above my paygrade but I got the feeling that the Waiting for Godot moment for ISO 20022 increased after reading:

Federal Reserve delays ISO 20022 cutover by two years

Banks can learn many lessons from Fintechs but there's a limit to how many of those lessons they can put to practice because of fundamental differences between Banking and Fintech in business model (PLBS v. VC), ability to leverage Regulatory Gap (Low v. High), and other attributes that I highlighted in my following posts:

Banks Or Fintechs: Who Is Ahead?

Why Banks Will Never Catch Up With Fintechs