Snippings

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A study using data on more than four million apps at the Google Play Store from 2016 to 2019 concluded that GDPR induced the exit of about a third of available apps and cut the production of apps in half. If you are wondering why that is important in economic terms, note that the report examined long-run equilibria with and without GDPR and found that it reduces consumed surplus by about a third. A third.

From: Global Retail Payments: A2A, Data And Non-Banks Key Areas For Accelerating Innovation.

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Mr. Dimon singled out payments as a specific hill for banks to die on. This is because the business models of the future depend on data, and payment accounts for the overwhelming majority of interactions between a bank and its customers and therefore customer data. When storming that redoubt (and the walls were breached this week with the news that ChasePay is being shut down) the techfins don’t care about the money, because the margins on payments are going down, but about the data.

From: Broke: Challenger Bank. Woke: Challenger Money.

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At bottom, a bank is a balance-sheet, a factory that turns capital into financial products (eg, loans and mortgages) and a sales force, says Dave Birch of Consult Hyperion, a consultancy. The first two are heavily regulated, and Big Tech is uninterested. That is why the giants have turned to banks to do the tedious bits. Apple’s card is issued by Goldman Sachs, and Amazon’s ones by Chase, Synchrony and American Express. Google’s accounts are backed by Citi and a banking union.
Rather, the tech giants covet distribution.

From: Big Tech takes aim at the low-profit retail-banking industry.

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We surveyed top retailers actively preparing for this shift. Their responses revealed a consistent stance:

They plan to leverage AI and their proprietary data to enhance in-domain customer experience.
They’ll resist intermediaries that threaten their customer relationships or reduce them to price-based competition.
They are explicitly pushing back on becoming just another node in someone else’s mega-platform—they won’t support the creation of a “new Google.”
Shopping isn’t just transactional. Consumers love the experience. It’s a form of recreation and expression. One retailer noted: “People will send their kids to daycare just to shop.”
Within financial services, banks have the same resistance. Imagine a financial agent that will automatically open new accounts for you and switch your card if better rates can be found.

From: Agentic Commerce Predictions – 2025 | Noyes Payments Blog.

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Earlier this year, payments expert Tom Noyes wrote that identity and authorization will be key to to agentic commerce. I see Wallets as the gatekeeper or “controller” that permissions data among trusted agents as well as permissioning “action”. BTW, none of the wallets can make this happen without Visa and Mastercard networks. Who owns the risk in an agent transaction? It is the merchant.. And they will have a significant say in how transactions are authorized within the new experiences they build.

From: Agentic Commerce Predictions – 2025 | Noyes Payments Blog.

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Philip Lane, a Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, gave a speech at the University College Cork Economics Society Conference im March 2025 in which he higlighted the role of the digital euro a tool to limit “the dominance of foreign digital currencies, including the monetary sovereignty risks created by widely-adopted foreign-currency stablecoins” and as a means to deliver an open alternative to the “platform-based payment systems”, where payments are bundled with other services.

A working paper from the Brazlian central bank looked into this in some detail and they found that while a bank’s customers benefit from instant payments there is a corresponding impact on the bank’s’ ability to manage the timing of their

payment flows. The reduced ability to delay and net off of payment flows means bank are more exposed to shocks and therefore they hold a bigger propotion of liquid assets. In effect, banks become “narrower”.

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The banking industry is lobbying to protect its deposit base by banning stablecoins from paying interest

Disagree

and prohibiting nonfinancial companies from issuing stablecoins. That would prevent big tech companies such as Elon Musk’s X from competing with banks.

Disagree.

It’s also pushing to ban stablecoin issuers from directly accessing the Fed’s payment system, which is only open to banks. Circle, for example, has advocated for such access so it can hold assets at the central bank and settle transactions without relying on a bank.

Disagree

From: Trump’s Stablecoin Push Set to Collide With Banks — The Information.

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Legislation on stablecoins could threaten banks’ role in the financial system. Customers could potentially stash their cash in stablecoins rather than bank deposits and move money without going through banks.

From: Trump’s Stablecoin Push Set to Collide With Banks — The Information.

Looking after customers’ money and moving money around are two different things. Yes, they are muddled together in commercial banks right now, but there is no reason for this to continue. In fact it may be better all round if they are disentangled.

If you look at the US, then stablecoins might well take away some of the banks’ payment revenues but could offer significant benefits to customers. Conversely, stablecoins will not take away bank deposits because they are for transacitonal 

 

I wonder if in the long run customers will either know or care.

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✅ Reputation & Trust Signals → AI agents will prioritise trusted brands—reputation, verified reviews, and sustainability metrics may replace traditional ad targeting.

From: Marketing in the Age of AI Agents: Who Are You Advertising To? 🧍🏻or 🤖 | LinkedIn.

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Ken Mandel puts it this way

The Shift in Advertising

Today: 👩🔧 Humans see and interact with ads.

Near Future: 🤖 AI agents filter everything—they see the ads, not humans.

Not so Distant Future: 🔮 Via new “AdTech” infrastructures, Brands, AI Agents & Ad Agencies will communicate through highly efficient structured data sets. Think code not copy.

From: Marketing in the Age of AI Agents: Who Are You Advertising To? 🧍🏻or 🤖 | LinkedIn.

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