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Ellysha Gillespie, 32, said she received thousands of dollars in cash when she got married in the Hunter Valley earlier this month before holidaying in Sydney. She quickly banked all the money, saying the only time she uses cash is when the eftpos machine at her nail salon has stopped working.

From Consumer spending: The Australians who can’t remember using cash.

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2023 could be a tipping point for open banking payments in the UK and the US with “new payment services leveraging open banking APIs” being a top IT product investment priority for almost one in four (23%) UK respondents and one in five (20% US respondents, according to Omdia’s 2022/23 survey of payment issuers/acquirers. Variable recurring payments (VRP) are being labeled the breakthrough use case: VRP is a more modern, secure, and flexible way of collecting regular payments for businesses and consumers than the traditional but inefficient direct debit or ACH system. Given the popularity of subscriptions and preference for utility firms to collect regular payments, VRPs could be the hero use case, offering flexibility to customers, that accelerates adoption in the UK, the US and the rest of the world.

From Payment Trends to Watch in 2023.

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More fine-grained data, more sharing, and default global.

That’s a hard problem because GDPR and privacy are giant issues in every jurisdiction.

From Fintech 🧠 Food – KYC is still broken – by Simon Taylor:

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The challenge to the traditional retail banks, apart from keeping up with new arrivals digitally, is less the switching of current accounts and more the waning power of that primary account relationship as other services proliferate around it.

From The UK led the world in open banking — and then got left behind | Financial Times:

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Brazil last year switched to a broader open finance strategy. Australia has done the same but gone further, implementing a consumer data right which can be implemented sector by sector starting in energy. The UK’s equivalent, a smart data regime that would establish customers’ rights and enable the sharing of data in other sectors, is currently shelved after an on-again, off-again experience in the political turmoil last year.

From The UK led the world in open banking — and then got left behind | Financial Times:

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Meanwhile, from the state of New York came the news that several government agencies are currently testing a new digital ID solution aimed at making it easier for residents to access online services.

Dubbed “NY.gov ID+”, the solution is meant to replace a number of disparate login systems currently used for access to different agencies. The system’s development is tied to a broader effort, led by Governor Kathy Hochul, to revamp government services, with plans to build out the state’s web design team and make online services more user-friendly and accessible.

From MDL, Digital ID Gain Momentum in State Efforts:

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Authentication processes are also being enhanced by delegating power to merchants. Lowering authentication friction is key to a seamless user experience. Therefore, merchants across Europe are investing in advanced authentication capabilities to allow them to process SCA-compliant transactions without purchasers being redirected to a banking app or having to enter a one-time passcode. This helps reduce fraud and improve authorization rates, all while retaining ownership and control of the checkout experience.

From 2023 Predictions: Authentication, Digital Identity, In-Car Payments:

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The Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, recently told the Treasury Select Committee that he wasn’t sure if a wholesale CBDC and or whether “a wholesale CBDC and digital RTGS are different”.

The Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, recently told the Treasury Select Committee that a private sector Sterling stable coin would be a “digital version of a Scottish bank” which prints banknotes than are a liability of a commercial bank but fully backed at the at the Bank of England.

Andrew Griffith, the Economic Secretary of the UK Treasury, recently said he thought that a wholesale private sector stablecoin would precede a wholesale CBDC, which he sees as happening before a retail CBDC, while the Governor of the Bank England Andrew Bailey doesn’t see the need for a wholesale CBDC because the real time gross settlement system (RTGS) used for interbank payments already settles in central bank money (and, frankly, is always going to be faster than any form of shared ledger). But the benefit of a wholesale CBDC is that it gives the the ability to settle trades in tokenised assets on the ledger itself, enhancing liquidity in capital market.