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In BNPL Ain't Killing Banks. It's Making Them Rich, I highlighted how BNPLs in India have gained an edge over credit card by pivoting to "Point of Aisle" financing. Since then, the trend seems to be spreading worldwide, with leading BNPL apps like Klarna now looking like shopping apps and trying to hook consumers earlier in the purchase cycle than wait until the point of sale. 

I know the MasterCard BNPL news led to fall in the stock price of Affirm, PayPal, et al, but I can't help wondering if it's too little too late?

"vast majority of contactless txns in the UK are online".

Keen to know what contactless means in the context of online credit card payments? AFAIK, online credit card payments involve no contact, whether they're made with a plastic credit card having or not having contactless / NFC tech or not. So, the contactless / tap-and-go ceiling meant for brick-and-mortar payments is not applicable to online payments. Also, AFAIK, online credit card payments have no ceiling as long as they don't end up busting of the credit cardholder's credit limit.

It's not only the tepid response to UCIC in India. Even UK BANP received a lukewarm response. Account portability has generally flopped in finserv industry. OTOH, in the same industry, product portability has been successful e.g. Credit Card Balance Transfer, Mortgage Refinancing, etc. 

Not sure what but I'm sure there's a lesson in that for regulators, FIs and tech companies working in the portability space.

When they can get instant gratification with BNPL for what they want, who is going to save up with Layaway for what they need?

I can easily see how BNPL will disrupt a financial coaching app like Claro! 

On a side note, the finding of this study - BNPL industry is not taking market share away from credit cards - resonates strongly with my prediction in BNPL Ain't Killing Banks. It's Making Them Rich: BNPL is yet another product in which "Banker Bets, Banker Wins".

From a macroeconomic pov, a ceiling of GBP 100 in a $39K per capita economy does not sound too high compared to GBP 50 / $2K but, nonetheless, kudos to Lloyds for empowering customers to take their own decision by setting their own ceiling.

Not sure about UK but a lot of the subscription economy in USA is actually subscription trap economy. 

What Is Subscription Trap?

Maybe BRC is taking its inspiration from #ZeroMDR. According to this reg in force in India since the beginning of 2020, banks and PSPs can't charge any merchant fees for UPI / A2A and RuPay Debit Card - and maybe also RuPay Credit Card - payments. Visa and MasterCard reportedly refused to comply. Since 70% of banking industry in India is government owned, the govt was able to push this reg down the throat of the entire industry.

Of course, banks, PSPs and the UPI RuPay scheme operator are not happy about it. They have been petitioning the govt to repeal this reg ever since its inception but it's still around 18 months later.

Apart from finserv products, banks have been selling insurance products for a long time. I recently came across a few banks selling books and white goods. As a part of Platformication strategy, McKinsey recently advocated banks to sell Flowers. 

How much more risk can there be in selling books, fridges and flowers compared to finserv products, which have risk written all over them by their very nature?

As we've seen recently in the case of the Wells Notice sent by SEC to CoinBase re. Lend, this seems like regulatory overreach. If so, the pendulum is likely swinging from lightbrush regulation / regulatory capture to the other extreme.

80% Plastic Credit Card + Debit Card and 20% Cash. Whatever happened to Mobile Payment? It was supposed to kill plastic the next year for the last 10 years. Has it gone the way of cheques or something? 

Airwallex's website is not too clear on how many of the following types of cross-border payments it supports in a supported corridor:

1. Business to Business
2. Business to Consumer
3. Consumer to Consumer
4. Consumer to Business

Great if someone with experience of using Airwallex can throw some light.