Debit and payment card transactions have become faster and cheaper – in part due to regulation.11 As a result, new actors, including non-banks, have emerged – transforming the UK payments system landscape. These have added new services or functionality to existing payment systems or taken over some of the functions previously performed by banks. 10 HM Treasury has established and will chair the JACS Group, bringing together the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), the Financial  Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Bank of England (BoE). This is within the context of the Government’s policy to safeguard access to cash for those who need it, whilst supporting digital payments. See the ToR at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/joint-authorities-cash-strategy-group-terms-of-reference 11 Examples include the EU Interchange Fee Regulation and moves by the European Commission against certain card providers, aimed at promoting competition and reducing the cost of accepting cards for merchants. 7  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  7  These include the so-called ‘E or electronic money’ providers who provide online payment services. The Bank of England is supporting these innovations. We are carrying out a major renewal and upgrading of the real time settlement system (RTGS), the central payments infrastructure which sits at the heart of all the UK commercial bank money payment systems. This will enable us further to support innovation and future developments in retail payments. We have already opened up direct access to the existing infrastructure from 21 firms in 2006 to 216 today, which now includes non-bank providers of payment services.
Bruno Gehrig: Moving among currency giants – a Swiss perspective Speech by Prof Bruno Gehrig, Vice Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce, Zurich, 16 January 2001. *  *  *  First of all, I should like to thank you for the pleasure and delight of being invited to speak to you today. At the same time, I should like to emphasise how much I appreciate the exemplary and highly successful activity of the Swiss American Chamber of Commerce. Your organisation plays an invaluable part in the economic, political and - most important of all - in the personal relations between US and Swiss citizens. In my speech entitled "Moving among currency giants" I should like to outline a few ideas under four different headings. I shall start out with a few remarks on the system of floating exchange rates, which we have more or less learned to live with since 1973, the time of the breakdown of Bretton Woods. This will be followed by some considerations on the always topical subject of short- and medium-term currency movements. After this bird's eye view of general developments, the frog perspective will be highlighted. I will deal with the special features of our small currency, and end by drawing a few conclusions for the SNB's monetary policy.