On our side, we are ready to face any outcome: the financial industry has been prepared. Even with a 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  welcome withdrawal agreement, all aspects of a possible trade agreement and its financial services component will still have to be negotiated in 2020. The uncertainty surrounding Brexit will therefore continue. Whatever, the UK will continue to participate in international forums where cooperation will be much needed to face our common challenges, including with Japan. In this respect, I would like to stress the strong convergence between France and Japan on numerous international issues, and notably the defense of a multilateral order, taxation, digital regulation and green finance. The excellent cooperation between our respective G7 and G20 Presidencies this year proved it eloquently. I also heartily welcome the cooperation agreement that was signed between Paris Europlace and FinCityTokyo in June. Now, we have to look beyond Brexit. We expect Europe’s financial services architecture to move from being monocentric, centred on the City of London, to a more polycentric model. Paris has major assets which it can build on to enhance its central role in this post-Brexit European financial architecture. Firstly, it benefits from a strong financial ecosystem: our capital city is a leader in key activities such as life and non-life insurance and in asset management; it is home to four of the euro area’s eight global systemically important banks, and to two of the three European Supervisory Authorities – ESMA and the EBA.
One prime example of this possible groundswell is the preparation, under the impulse of the Euro Retail payments Board (ERPB), of a pan-European instant payments scheme by the European Payments Council (EPC), based on the existing SEPA Credit transfer scheme. This new scheme, which should be finalized by the end of 2016 and operational before the end of 2017, will serve the development of further innovative products, especially via smart devices, for proximity and mobile payments. This is a relevant example of how the harmonisation and standardization work done in the context of the so-called “SEPA 1.0.” for legacy payment instruments (direct debit and credit transfer) may serve as a basis for market players to develop new innovative real time and paperless payment solutions, what I would call “SEPA 2.0.”. Secondly, we observe the emergence of new payment behaviors and new market players, in relation with further technological innovations. This is mostly led by the rising prominence of e-commerce, which has fundamentally changed payment usages in the last few years. The  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  search for a payment instrument adapted to these evolutions has first led to a wider usage of payment cards, beyond proximity transactions. These Card-not-present payments over the internet now account in France for nearly 7.5% of all card based-transactions in volume, and for 11.6% of the overall value of these transactions.