Archive: July 2023

On 20 July 2023, the House of Commons’ Treasury Committee published the government’s response to its report on Regulating Crypto. In the report, which was published in May 2023, the cross-party Committee of MPs called for consumer trading in unbacked crypto to be regulated as gambling.

On 21 July 2023, HM Treasury published a Policy Statement setting out the Government’s findings from the call for evidence on the Payment Services Regulations 2017, specifically in relation to the issue of account termination and freedom of expression. It also sets out the Government’s proposed reforms to enhance requirements relating to contract termination for payment accounts.

On 20 July 2023, the Bank of England (BoE) published a speech by Victoria Cleland (Executive Director of Payments) entitled ‘Payments: it’s all change’.

On 12 July 2023, HM Treasury published The Electronic Money, Payment Card Interchange Fee and Payment Services (Amendment) Regulations 2023, a statutory instrument (SI) amending the Electronic Money Regulations 2011 and the Payment Services Regulation 2017 to remove a limitation on the FCA’s power to make rules in relation to authorised electronic money institutions, small electronic money institutions, authorised payment institutions, small payment institutions and registered account information service providers.

On 30 June 2023, the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) published a working paper on a market review into card scheme and processing fees: recent changes to scheme and processing fees.

On 11 July 2023, HM Treasury published a call for input to inform the Future of Payments Review 2023. The Review was launched in July 2023 to consider how payments are likely to be made in the future and make recommendations on the steps needed to successfully deliver world leading retail payments, further boosting UK fintech competitiveness.

On 11 July 2023, HM Treasury published its response to the consultation on information requirements in the Payment Accounts Regulations 2015 (PARs). The consultation was published on 9 December 2022 as part of the Edinburgh Reforms. As well as providing an overview of the feedback to the consultation, the response document also outlines the government’s proposed next steps.

On 7 July 2023, the Payments Systems Regulator (PSR) published a consultation paper concerning the legal instruments with which it will implement its authorised push payment (APP) scam reimbursement requirement policy. The consultation paper follows the PSR’s Policy Statement 23/3: Fighting authorised push payment fraud: a new reimbursement requirement – response to September 2022 consultation (PS23/3).

On 20 July 2023, the FCA announced the launch of its permanent Digital Sandbox. The Digital Sandbox, which has until now only been available temporarily to those participating in pilots and TechSprints, will be made available permanently on 1 August 2023 following two successful pilots.

On 12 July 2023, the FCA published Feedback Statement 23/4: The potential competition impacts of Big tech entry and expansion in retail financial services (FS23/4). FS23/4 summarises feedback to the FCA’s October 2022 discussion paper (DP22/5) which aimed to stimulate conversation on areas where Big Tech entry is likely to create the biggest competition benefits for consumers and where there is the greatest risk of significant harm if competition does not develop effectively.