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It will be interesting to see the adoption this gets - the GENIUS act seems very little to do with payments and everything to do with opening up a new channel to create demand for treasuries and T-bills.

The demand for instant, cheap payments is what matters - this is gaining traction in the USA with TCH RTP and FedNow but is limited by the stranglehold cards have on US payments. Even if demand intensifies, it is difficult to see what difference stablecoins will make on domestic US payments, especially given many institutions seem to be planning to issue their own, none of them compatible with each other. 

However, an open mind is the best approach, time will tell how stablecoins develop in the USA and what route they take. 

I doubt the BoE has any intention to shelve the digital pound but instead is laying the ground to justify its introduction later.

Last month the Governor of the BoE said "I am not against Central Bank Retail Digital Currency, but I question why it is needed if innovation proceeds as I think it should". In the same speech he called out tokenised commercial bank deposits where he thinks innovation should proceed - for domestic and cross-border payments, in preference to stablecoins. However tokenised deposits are unlikey to make much headway in the UK, nor are GBP stablecoins (there is no demand and initiatives such as the Regulated Liability Network have gone quiet), whereas USD stablecoins for cross-border payments globally and domestic in the US look set for the big time. Together with the slow pace of open banking adoption, the BoE could have plenty of reasons in two years time to say the banking industry has failed to deliver and "reluctantly" is stepping in with a retail CBDC to prevent the UK from falling further behind the US and Europe.

Why is it that the only examples ever given for the use of digital id are proving your age when buying alcohol? It is neither a digital use case nor a pressing problem.

This act is vey dark and lays the groundwork for restricting individual freedoms.

Can someone explain what data consumers want to share more widely and why? Sharing financial data is necessary to secure credit, but consumers do it because they have to not because they want to. What data is there to share with a utility company other than consumption data which is pretty much the same for all households by size, within some predictable and tight ranges? And for telecoms? Far too much data is already scraped and captured by corporates without consumer knowledge or consent. Most consumers want to restrict their data not spread it further.

This is a bizarre feature - perhaps reflective of the unthinking society we live in today. Instead of checking, double checking, then paying, it is a case of paying, then thinking about it, then checking.

Monzo is encouraging carelessness.

For those who are diligent, it means adding an artificial delay into a real-time payment, somewhat negating the benefits and adding friction.

PayPal must have been galvanised into action by the launch of Wero in Germany and its plans for rolling out in-store payments. Cost for the retailer and UX for the consumer will play a big part in who wins.

PayPal has a large share of online payments in Germany but ultimatley consumers keep their money in bank accounts which gives Wero an enduring advantage.

Why the need to co-brand with Mastercard? It must be an expedient to route payments from POS contactless terminals to PayPal but longer term there must be a more direct solution through merchant acquirers. 

You have missed out key data points from the fraud report reference:

p.18 - contactless fraud increased 80% in 2022. Add the 19% increase in 2023 and that is a 142% increase since before the limit was raised to £100.

p.30 - a more meaningful comparator for contactless fraud is face to face card fraud which is the only use case for contactless, rather than all card fraud. Face to face card fraud was £91.4m and contactless accounted for 45%.

Raising the £100 limit will increase contactless fraud further, for very little, if any benefit, especially since plastic usage is declining as mobile card payments increase.

What fees and spreads do cardholders and merchants pay? These type of propositions look great but if they come with high costs for users they won't fly.

Who keeps £85,000 in a bank account, let alone £110,000?  FSCS is designed to protect the wealthy at the expense of the rest of consumers.

The fact that FSCS has paid over £20 billion, primarily in relation to deposit failures during the 2008 financial crisis highlighst that it creates moral hazard for banks. They win when they profit from excessive lending and the tax payer loses if they go insolvent - I doubt FSCS has anything like the funds needed to refund protected consumers if even a medium size bank goes under. 

Compensating depositors from failed small credit unions makes it look like FSCS works and is beneficial, but would it work for a large bank that fails with say 10m customers and £100bn in protected deposits?  I doubt it, and it didn't during the GFC. It means even though the FSCS levy is based on the level of deposits, the credit union is paying a levy that reflects its risks and may even be overpaying, while the large bank isn't - it can be bailed out only by the taxpayer.

A better solution would be market driven insurance schemes which FIs can choose to use and pay market rates, and compete on how secure their deposits are.

If a receiving bank cannot be held responsible to a third party victim of fraud, by the same logic nor can a social media company when their platform is used to initiate frauds.

Banks still need to do more to prevent fraudsters from operating bank accounts. The APP reimbursement rules, which came into effect after this fraud, go some way to encourage banks to do more (by making the fraudster's bank 50% liable for fraud up to £85k).