Reactions to Apple Pay; Santander's Succession Plan

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Paying with Apple: Banks have bought into what Apple's selling with its near-field communications-based Apple Pay system, as they like its security features, intuitive user experience and the Apple brand name, and also they harbor the hope that Apple Pay will drive additional credit card usage, as American Banker reported. Retailers, not so much. Yes, starting in October, you'll be able to wave your iPhone 6 in front of an NFC reader at about 220,000 locations in the U.S., including McDonald's. (The FT reports the obvious that Apple's in talks to unveil Apple Pay in Europe.) But that's still far less than the 9 million U.S. merchants who now take credit cards and debit cards. Oh by the way, all those food trucks already have adopted Square and a few other mobile payments systems. Then there's the fact that a group of retailers, which includes Wal-Mart, has its own payments services that can be used on existing iPhones and Android phones. Are we about to see a repeat of the VHS-versus-Beta debate of the 1980s? In the meantime, read the response that American Banker's Rob Blackwell wrote to the Times' Neil Irwin that Apple Pay is a dud.

Santander Succession: Ana Patricia Botín will succeed her late father, Emilio Botín, as chairman of Spain's Banco Santander, the eurozone's largest bank by market value. Jamie Dimon, Sandy Weill and other U.S. banking titans on Wednesday praised Emilio Botín, who died this week, for his influence on global banking. Ana Patricia has been commended for her work leading Santander's U.K. business.

Wall Street Journal

Lawmakers on Wednesday approved a bill that would make changes to the bankruptcy code to allow the largest financial firms to be dismantled through a bankruptcy procedure. But there is disagreement whether this is even needed. The House Judiciary Committee approved the bill, a similar bill is on deck in the Senate, and it has support from officials at the Fed and the FDIC. But FDIC Vice Chair Thomas Hoenig said the current code may be sufficient and that after seeing banks' next round of living wills, it will be easier to determine whether the bankruptcy code needs updating.

You can thank the Fed for the lowering of our federal deficit, Spencer Jakab writes in the "Ahead of the Tape" column. If it hadn't been for the Fed's bond-buying, the deficit almost certainly would've topped $1 trillion. Instead, it'll be about $500 billion. The government is paying lower interest rates on publicly held debt. Plus, the Fed is paying fewer remittances to the Treasury. Throw the effect of compounding on top of all that and ... voilà.

Thank goodness for volatility in the currency market, as choppiness helps currency traders make a profit. Indeed, Citigroup this week said that a yearlong decline in fixed-income trading, which includes currencies, should come to a halt in the third quarter.

Financial Times

Coinbase, in San Francisco, said it will start a bitcoin service in parts of Europe, including France, Spain and Italy, but not Germany.

RBS stands for The Royal Bank of … Stoke-on-Trent? On Wednesday, the Royal Bank of Scotland confirmed that if the Scots vote in favor of independence from the United Kingdom, it will move its headquarters to England. Lloyds Banking Group confirmed the same thing earlier Wednesday.

New York Times

Bank of America and UBS are at the heart of the dispute over the proposed settlement of Detroit's bankruptcy.

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
MORE FROM AMERICAN BANKER