Latest news with #regulators
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
PS21/3: Are UK firms really ready?
The Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) operational resilience rules were introduced three years ago with a clear message: financial firms must be able to withstand disruptions and keep essential services running no matter what happens. On paper, the industry has had plenty of time to prepare. In reality, some firms are still racing against the clock, realising too late that compliance is about more than just paperwork. With only days left, the question remains: who's truly ready, and who's cutting it fine? Operational resilience isn't a new concept, but it has taken on greater urgency in recent years. From cyberattacks and IT failures to third-party outages, financial institutions face increasing risks that can bring services to a halt. Customers expect 24/7 access to their money; businesses need smooth payment flows; and regulators are watching closely. PS21/3 was introduced to make sure firms aren't just reacting to disruptions, they're prepared in advance. Yet, as the deadline looms, gaps in resilience planning are becoming more apparent. Some firms have treated compliance as a tick-box exercise, failing to integrate resilience into their broader strategy. Others have struggled with the sheer complexity of mapping critical business services and setting realistic impact tolerances. The FCA has been clear: firms need to justify their decisions with evidence, not assumptions. Simply hoping a competitor can pick up the slack during a disruption isn't enough. Every firm must know exactly how long it can sustain an outage before harm is caused and prove that they can recover within that timeframe. One of the biggest challenges for firms has been managing third-party dependencies. Today's financial ecosystem is deeply interconnected, with banks, payment providers and fintech firms all relying on external vendors for core services. What happens when those vendors fail? The CrowdStrike outage in 2024 was a stark reminder of how dependent financial firms are on third-party providers. Some businesses had contingency plans in place; others found themselves blindsided, unable to function until their suppliers restored service. The FCA has made it clear that firms cannot outsource responsibility for resilience. Even if a third party is delivering a key service, the regulated firm is still accountable for ensuring its stability. For payment providers and e-commerce businesses, this challenge is even greater. Many operate across multiple jurisdictions, juggling various payment rails, processors and alternative payment methods. Ensuring that these providers meet resilience standards and can keep transactions flowing even in times of disruption, is essential. Beyond financial institutions themselves, merchants also have a stake in operational resilience. If a payment provider or acquiring bank fails to meet FCA standards, businesses relying on them could face service outages, lost revenue and customer frustration. Merchants must be proactive in selecting financial partners that take resilience seriously. This means working with payment providers that have robust contingency plans, failover mechanisms and diverse payment routing capabilities. A provider with a single point of failure is a business risk; one that many merchants cannot afford to take. As resilience becomes a key factor in financial partnerships, businesses need to demand transparency from their providers. How do they handle service disruptions? How quickly can they switch to backup systems? What safeguards are in place to keep payments running? These are the questions that should be asked before an outage occurs, not after. With the deadline fast approaching, firms that are still scrambling must prioritise key actions in the coming days. While long-term resilience requires a continuous effort, there are still urgent steps that can be taken to ensure compliance by 31 March: Verify that all important business services have been identified, and impact tolerances are clear. Every service should have a defined maximum tolerable outage time, backed by data. Run final scenario tests. Stress-testing resilience plans under 'severe but plausible' conditions can expose vulnerabilities that need last-minute fixes. Strengthen third-party oversight. Ensure that suppliers have their own resilience frameworks in place, and that they align with FCA expectations. Review and update recovery strategies. Response teams should know exactly what to do when disruptions occur, minimising downtime and customer impact. For firms that planned ahead, this period is about fine-tuning and reinforcing resilience strategies. For those that delayed preparations, it's a race to prove that they can meet regulatory standards, before the FCA starts asking tough questions. While 31 March marks the official compliance deadline, operational resilience isn't a one-time task, it's an ongoing expectation. The FCA has made it clear that financial firms must continue refining their resilience strategies, conducting regular reviews, and adapting to new risks. Beyond regulatory pressure, firms that invest in resilience stand to gain a competitive advantage. Customers trust institutions that can deliver seamless services, even during crises. Payment providers that can guarantee uptime will attract more business. Merchants will prioritise financial partners that won't leave them stranded when disruptions strike. Those who see resilience as more than just a compliance burden, but rather as a core pillar of their operations, will be the ones that emerge stronger in the long run. For financial services, resilience isn't just about surviving disruptions, it's about thriving despite them. Azimkhon Askarov is Co-CEO & Partner at "PS21/3: Are UK firms really ready?" was originally created and published by Electronic Payments International, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.
Reuters
14 hours ago
- Business
- Reuters
Google suffers setback at EU court over record $4.9 bln fine
Alphabet's Google faced a potential setback on Thursday as an adviser to Europe's highest court sided with EU antitrust regulators in the company's fight against a record $4.98 billion fine from 2018. Fiona Jones reports.
Bloomberg
a day ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
An Ex-Marxist Is Taking Risks to Reshape Sri Lanka
Last week, regulators in cash-strapped Sri Lanka raised power prices by 15%. President Anura Dissanayake, who during his successful election campaign last year promised to lower the cost of electricity by a third, had to explain his U-turn. The treasury could no longer afford to subsidize power, he said. Seven months into his term, the former radical has realized that keeping his country from one more crisis requires him to break promises and lose friends.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Exclusive-EU antitrust regulators to investigate $36 billion Mars bid for Kellanova, sources say
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -EU antitrust regulators are set to open a full-scale investigation into the $36 billion bid by candy company Mars for Pringles maker Kellanova, people close to the matter said on Wednesday. The European Commission is concerned about Mars' high market share in some products in some EU countries, the sources said. Mars is unlikely to offer remedies to assuage such concerns during the EU competition enforcer's preliminary review of the deal, which ends on June 25, the sources said.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Could CBDCs Crush Altcoin Returns? Investors Beware.
Central bank digital currencies could render many altcoins superfluous. Cryptocurrencies with hard-to-replicate capabilities will survive just fine. Coins that only aspire to be payment rails could be wiped out entirely, eventually. 10 stocks we like better than XRP › Picture a four-lane highway suddenly upgraded with a government-built bullet train. Commuters who once tolerated toll roads and traffic will board the shiny new line the moment it starts running. The same dynamic may be coming for crypto. Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are edging closer to launch in the world's largest economies, promising 24/7, fee-free settlement backed by the state. If that rail goes live, why would ordinary people keep routing payments through privately issued cryptocurrencies that charge gas fees and carry protocol risk? That question should be front of mind for anyone holding payment-focused altcoins today. Let's investigate this issue in closer detail. Early evidence already hints at the risk of total replacement of many altcoins by CBDCs. As an example, consider that the Bahamas rolled out its Sand Dollar, the world's first nationwide retail CBDC, in late 2020. Why might that be a problem for altcoins? In short, because the Sand Dollar offers near-instant transfers with no foreign exchange spread, while merchants avoid interchange fees entirely. Programmability matters too, as regulators can flag suspicious transfers, which is a feature that is now appearing in U.K. digital-pound proofs of concept. And though the European Central Bank (ECB) insists its coming digital euro "would not be programmable money," it still plans automated rules for tax refunds and social payments if users opt in. The U.S. is inching forward in evaluating the impacts of CBDCs as well, despite an executive order earlier this year banning their implementation. A bipartisan congressional brief concluded in April that CBDCs are more likely to compete directly with cryptocurrencies used for payments than with speculative, novel, or other decentralized finance (DeFi) assets, laying the intellectual groundwork for a retail digital dollar pilot. If central banks can deliver near-free transfers with compliance baked in, the core selling proposition of many payment-rail altcoins, which is to say cheaper, faster movement of value, would evaporate. Tokens such as XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) derive a large share of their thesis from cross-border settlement efficiency. Should CBDCs interoperate across borders, a feature that's in active testing in numerous examples, that advantage shrinks further. Not every crypto project lives or dies on raw payments. Ethereum underpins thousands of decentralized finance contracts that price risk, provide leverage, and tokenize real-world assets. Solana is courting developers building on-chain games and high-throughput AI data feeds. Such ecosystems offer utility that CBDCs will not replicate soon. Before buying or holding any altcoin while CBDCs loom, investors should trace the real demand, keeping in mind that if volume spikes coincide with airdrops or liquidity mining, usage could disappear once state-owned digital cash is live. Investors should also model fee compression, as programmable CBDCs will cost users nearly zero, raising the question of whether an altcoin can drop its fees without gutting validator incentives. Assuming CBDCs gain mainstream traction by the late-2020s, tokens that fail those tests face shrinking addressable markets. The ECB aims for a political deal on the digital euro by early 2026, then a two- to three-year rollout. Others are likely to follow. That does not guarantee crashes in altcoins; meme coins thrived in 2024 despite lacking utility altogether, capturing a large amount of crypto narrative attention. Still, betting on speculative enthusiasm to outpace structural competition from sovereign money is not a viable strategy. And the threat to altcoins, particularly those without real capital backing, is undeniable. Therefore, tilt your preference to invest toward scarce on-chain capabilities that CBDCs cannot easily match. For example, while XRP's use as a medium of exchange may be threatened by CBDCs, its use as a platform for on-chain financial infrastructure catered to institutional investors is not, as its positioning is unique within the sector on that front. Other cryptocurrency sectors and capabilities like decentralized compute, verifiable storage, permissionless derivatives, or culture-driven digital collectibles will probably survive. Keep your position sizes in pure-payment tokens modest, and demand compelling value propositions before investing. Before you buy stock in XRP, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and XRP wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $660,821!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $886,880!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 791% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 174% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025 Alex Carchidi has positions in Ethereum and Solana. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Ethereum, Solana, and XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Could CBDCs Crush Altcoin Returns? Investors Beware. was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
