We published that Visa’s payment network has crashed across the UK and Europe, sparking chaos as transactions failed or being denied. The company confirmed that it was suffering an outage and it was investigating the cause. Visa has since updated and claimed the issue was caused by a “hardware failure” why would we question them?
Here at Share Talk, we thought we would have a look at Visa and we came across this interesting article published by the UK news outlet BBC Visa considers incentives for UK firms to go cashless.
In June 2017, Visa chief executive Al Kelly told investors that the company was “focused on putting cash out of business”. “The number one growth lever [for the company] is the conversion of cheque and cash to digital and electronic payments.”
Don’t forget retailers pay fees every time a customer uses a debit or credit card. Even though interchange fees, as they are called, have been capped by the EU, retailers still pay an average of 16p on each credit card transaction and 5.5p on each debit card.
In total UK retailers still paid near £1 million in such fees last year, charges that have been criticised by the British Retail Consortium (BRC).
Now you understand why the mainstream financial sectors have been driving this agenda to remove cash from general use. We have seen the same assault on the chequebook because it is not profitable the banks claim, yet with one in ten in the UK running their own business, l think they may have a different opinion.
Yesterday once again highlighted how vulnerable people are who don’t carry cash and relies upon the plastic friend in their pocket. Society is truly dependant on their little plastic friend and if this image below represents modern society, l think we have a problem.
The banks drive continues towards a cashless society and as we know it has it’s a flaw yet they keep stacking all the chips up in their favour but let us not forget the past mismanagement of one bank, in particular, RBS.
Why single these out? A Taxpayers £45 billion bailouts springs to mind and even this past week AGM show’s the RBS management team are detached from their own shareholder’s concerns.
We won’t mention the RBS has already accepted some wrongdoing in 2018 and set aside £400 million pounds to compensate firms in its GRG unit. That story is covered in a bit more detail below.
Bank are determined to push their own agenda forward with the Royal Bank of Scotland being the latest to close high street branches even though shareholders hit out over branch closures & customer mistreatment.
With the announced plans to close 162 branches across England and Wales on top of 259 closures announced last autumn, you may understand the anger in the local communities across the country.
Chairman Howard Davies blamed the latest round of closures on its competition responsibilities linked to its £45 billion Government bailout during the financial crisis, has scrapped plans to sell off its Williams & Glyn network.
Yes, you read that correctly, Mr Davies is blaming the Taxpayers £45 billion bailouts for closing RBS branches, strange old world.
While the UK government is looking to sell a ten percent stake in RBS for an estimated £3 billion, which would result in a significant loss.
Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland bosses are playing down customer numbers to justify branch closures, shocking investigation finds
Before we leave the RBS story, we have to mention the FCA humiliated over leaked Royal Bank of Scotland report we published in February this year. Also, don’t forget RBS had to deal with past misconduct issues as it reached a $5 billion settlement with U.S. authorities over its sale of mortgage bonds.
Bosses at the Financial Conduct Authority had desperately fought to keep the damning findings of a probe into Royal Bank of Scotland’s tainted Global Restructuring Group (GRG) out of public hands.
But the document has been splashed across the internet for everyone to see – leaving the regulator red-faced and former RBS bosses in the spotlight over the role they played in the scandal.
Former bank bosses under fire over the scandal at toxic turnaround unit
- Bosses at the FCA tried to hide the findings of a probe into RBS’s GRG unit
- Senior GRG managers were at the heart of a plan to plunder small firms for cash
- Leaked emails reveal a toxic culture of bullying and pursuit of relentless profit
High-ranking RBS staff at the time of the scandal now hold senior positions elsewhere in the City – including as the bosses of drugmaker Glaxo, insurance giant RSA and lender Santander.
RBS has accepted some wrongdoing and set aside £400 million pounds to compensate firms in its GRG unit, and appointed a former high court judge Sir William Blackburne to oversee appeals by customers not happy with their payouts. We watch with interest.
@Ian_Fraser Journalist. Author of Shredded: Inside RBS ‘Read it & weep’
His book, Shredded: Inside RBS, The Bank That Broke Britain, published in June 2014, explores how and why RBS, the world’s largest company by assets at the time of its collapse, became the world’s most expensive bank to bail out. The book — based on extensive interviews with more than 120 current and former RBS insiders, advisers, politicians, and others — was longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year and has received positive reviews including from FT chief economics correspondent Martin Wolf.
Cyber fraud statistics
Let us close by highlighting online banking security systems as the banks, debit cards push the public towards a new brighter future? With the branch closures, this is the reality of what the public face’s being pushed online.
There were 3.2 million online fraud cases last year it’s clear to see that cyber-crime is skyrocketing. Action Fraud, the UK’s national fraud and cybercrime reporting centre is the organisation tasked with combatting several types of fraud including online and digital fraudulent cases. It was recently reported that 1 million Britons fall victim to computer viruses each year with 1 in 5 scams demanding cash to release funds.
tsg.com/blog/security/cyber-fraud-statistics-infographic
