The possibility to create new access channels provides opportunities for nimble firms that are not banks to act as middle men and provide interfaces that facilitate the initiation of the underlying, more old-fashion payment. Remember that payment initiation services and third-party providers have been at the centre of the discussions on the new Payment Service Directive. These firms don’t compete outright with the banks and in some cases they may even directly cooperate with them. In other cases, the non-bank may compete directly with the banks. It may even have built its own infrastructure or account structure through which it processes payments. This is most likely in cases where the non-bank already has a kind of network that it can adapt and utilize for payments. Telecom operators and Internet service providers are examples of such firms. A concrete example of such a case is M-Pesa, the mobile payment service launched by SafariCom in Kenya. Initially intended for person-to-person payments, it quickly became a success and a platform for a number of financial services. Non-banks can also act as suppliers of services to the banks, e.g. payment switches routing the payment information or the outsourcing of back-end services such as the operation of large IT-platforms, etc. These are all essential inputs for payment intermediation. Because non-banks can enter the payment process in so many places, we have longer and more complex payment processes with more actors involved. Banks, at least for some type of payment services, have less direct contact with the end-users.
Central banks have an additional stake in this game. Cash is one of our main products and an increased supply of services from non-banks is likely to reduce its usage. On the one hand, central bank should embrace the development from an efficiency point of view. On the other, a rapid decrease in the use of cash is not without problems. This is only a few of the aspects that may be debated in the second session. The third topic is the future and we all want to know what it will look like. Will the banks be reduced to mere suppliers of infrastructure and account holding services while other actors, the non-banks, have most of the end-user relation-ship? Or will the banks win by knock-out? Will the non-banks become banks over time as their activity expands? Will payment services be delivered to us by Apple? Google? Facebook? Alibaba? What about Bitcoin and its peers? Will we simply have payment services provided by an anonymous network? In addition to having all these kinds of issue debated among representatives for market actors and authorities, we will also have the pleasure of listening to the academic perspective of Professor Charles M. Kahn from the University of Illinois. I’m really looking forward to learning more about all these topics today. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3