Karen you say "What’s one more regulator when you already have a few dozen telling you how to run your business?" I think you may be confusing the UK with the US. A universal bank in London currently has two regulators, the PRA for the banking licence and the FCA for financial services to consumers. The equivalent bank in New York would have over 30 regulators. So the new UK payment regulator just makes it three.

You go on to say "these are the governments who haven’t introduced A-N-Y of the major innovations in payments, ever." Well, that is not true either. Faster Payments in the UK would not have happened but for the the UK government requiring it and providing the mechanism via Voca Link and the RTGS at the Bank of England. Whatever you think about the business case for FP, there is no doubt that it is a major innovation, that it was introduced by a government and that it is much bettter for consumers. It is the enabler of the UK payM service which will be another government introduced major payment innovation.

Far from the government sucking the blood from the consumer, it seems much more like that is what the banks have been doing. BACS, the scheme available for low value payments, had a three day clearing cycle. Now with FP we have clearing before settlement. Before the banks were able to make money on the float at our expense.