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Mastercard has unveiled Agent Pay, its new agentic payments technology to power commerce in the age of AI. Separately, PayPal has made its own agentic commerce play, with new tools for developers.

From: Mastercard and PayPal make agentic commerce plays.

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Last weekend (20th April 2025), Marks & Spencer (M&S), one of the UK’s leading retailers, experienced a significant cyberattack that disrupted key services across its operations. The incident affected contactless payments and delayed Click & Collect order pickups in stores, though M&S assured customers that its website and mobile app continued to function normally.

From: A Closer Look At The M&S Cyberattack.

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The program introduces Mastercard Agentic Tokens, which build upon proven tokenization capabilities that today power global commerce solutions like mobile contactless payments, secure card-on-file, and Mastercard Payment Passkeys, as well as programmable payments like recurring expenses and subscriptions. This helps unlock an agentic commerce future where consumers and businesses can transact with trust, security, and control.

From: Mastercard unveils Agent Pay, pioneering agentic payments technology to power commerce in the age of AI | Mastercard Newsroom.

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Marks & Spencer has said it is still battling a cyber incident that hit contactless payments and click and collect orders.
Shares in the company dipped further on Thursday morning after revealing overnight that its operations were continuing to face disruption.

From: M&S says contactless payments still down after cyber attack | The Standard.

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With the tax burden at a 70-year high, the hidden cash economy is the more obvious reason for the enduring popularity of paper notes. Babysitters, cleaners and gardeners are all commonly paid in cash. When I asked people to recall their last cash transaction, paying for haircuts, manicures and beauty treatments also featured. While few admitted it, hawkers of illegal substances are another obvious category of recipient.

And if you’re struggling to find a tradesperson to undertake any kind of work on your home, offering to pay in cash may suddenly open up their availability. Not that I am justifying this behaviour, but the desire to get a discount for cash marries well with sole traders aiming to stay under the £90,000 VAT threshold. One of many cliff edges within the UK tax system, crossing above this level means having to add 20 per cent to prices — the turnover of small businesses tends to “bunch” just beneath it.

Flying under the radar by not banking the proceeds could explain why so much cash is out there — and why higher value notes are in hot demand. The number of tenners in circulation has dipped, while £50 notes are up over 10 per cent year on year. Good luck trying to spend one, though. Try one of the many small high street businesses actively encouraging the use of cash: those taking smaller volumes of card payments are charged disproportionately higher fees when we tap to pay.

From: We’re not spending cash, so why are we hoarding it?.

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One of the ways officials tried to achieve this was by promoting so-called challenger banks that were meant to take on the incumbents. But despite regulators deliberately handing out more banking licences to newcomers in order to foster competition, the UK’s retail banking market remains dominated by the largest historic players.

From: In charts: How Britain’s banking revolution failed.

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The EU took its first formal step towards open finance in June 2023 with a proposed Financial Data Access Regulation (FiDA), building out from the Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) which allowed third-party payment service providers to access information about payment accounts maintained by other institutions and facilitated the introduction of open banking in 2018. FiDA will generally apply to financial institutions and to the newly introduced Financial Information Service Providers (FISPs) – entities that have obtained an authorisation from a competent authority to provide financial information services which involve accessing customer data. The framework will allow, subject to an individual customer’s consent, access to data on mortgage credit agreements, loans, savings, investments in financial instruments, insurance-based investment products, cryptoassets, real estate, and related financial assets, including pension rights. However, more sensitive information, like data related to sickness and health insurance products will be excluded.

FiDA also presents new data-sharing tools, including a dashboard which will allow customers to manage their data permissions in real time, and arrangements for entities to agree ‘rules of the road’ such as contractual standards, access arrangements and even costs (known as financial data sharing schemes). Currently, FiDA is in the proposal stage; it is expected to be applicable from 2027.

From: The sanity of crowds – Can smart data initiatives transform consumer finances? | Herbert Smith Freehills | Global law firm.

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The European Commission will abandon plans to introduce rules requiring financial institutions to share information with customers and competitors after strong criticism from industry.
According to a document obtained by POLITICO, the Financial Data Access, or FiDA, regulation will be withdrawn within six months as it is “not aligned with Commission’s current objectives” and would introduce a “significant burden and complexity for financial actors” which goes against the EU executive’s goal to simplify rules.

From: Brussels U-turns on plans for more consumer financial data access – POLITICO.

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Initially flagged for potential withdrawal amid broader efforts to simplify the regulatory environment, FIDA has since re-emerged in the European Commission’s 2025 work programme.

From: FIDA in flux: What next for EU Open Finance Regulations?.

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Experts now anticipate significant revisions as FIDA enters the trialogue stage of negotiations between the Commission, the European Parliament, and member states.

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David Geale, the PSR’s managing director, says: “We have found that there is a lack of competition in the market, and evidence that Mastercard and Visa might have been able to charge UK businesses millions of pounds more than they would in a properly competitive market,

From: PSR to take action against card schemes after 25% hike in fees.

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Aylo (which owns the world’s largest porn sites) says it supports age assurance in principle, but argues that “any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy”. Well, I agree. Bot no sane person would recommend implementing age verification this way. The users age will be verified by third=party service providers who would the give the user the necessary credentials to present to porn sites inorder to gain access and these credentials would not contain any PII at all, simply the relevant attributes (eg, IS-OVER-18) digitially signed by, for example, a bank.

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The article quotes porn enthusiast Mallory McMaster, who says she “would not be watching pornography on a website that required me to upload a photo of my driver’s license,” because “I’m not sure where it would end up.”

From: Porn battle comes to Ohio with bill requiring users to verify age with state IDs | Biometric Update.

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