Digital snack Nirvana
Issue 732: 8 July 2025
Digital snack Nirvana
This week I visited digital snack Nirvana - well as long as I didn’t want to buy eggs or kindling.
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Who decides what goes on a bank note?
Angel of the North, Giants Causeway, Falkirk Wheel or Snowdon Mountain Railway - which image for a new bank note would you choose from my shortlist?
After nearly 100 votes my favourite image is leading the poll - click on the image below and make your UK icon choice from my poll.
Five Belgian Banks Join Growing European Payments Initiative
Five Belgian banks (Argenta, Bank Van Breda, Beobank, Crelan, and vdk bank) have announced their intention to join the European Payments Initiative (EPI) and will begin offering its digital wallet, Wero, to customers in the first half of 2026.
Wero, launched in late 2024 in Belgium and already adopted in France and Germany, now boasts around 40 million users.
The move is part of EPI’s strategic push to establish a pan‑European payments alternative to U.S. giants like Visa and Mastercard, offering instant QR‑code–based P2P transfers and rolling out payments for e‑commerce, in‑store, and loyalty features by 2026.
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What Fiat Cars Can Teach Us About Fiat Money
Three things that Fiat Cars Can Teach Us About Fiat Money:
Etymology: “Fiat” comes from Latin fiat, meaning “let it be done” or “by decree.” That’s key to both fiat currency and Fiat-branded vehicles—both were created by decree, not by intrinsic valuenortheypoint.substack.com+1northeypoint.substack.com+1.
Fiat Cars vs. Fiat Money: Just as Fiat (the car company) exists because someone declared it should, fiat money only has value because governments decree that it does. Neither has value rooted in tangible assets—it's all based on collective belief and authorisation.
Takeaway: The piece cleverly parallels how both the Italian automotive brand and modern currency systems operate: based heavily on trust, decree, and shared acceptance, not inherent worth.
Read: Let it be done.
EPC Seeks Directory Service Providers to Support VoP Scheme
The European Payments Council (EPC) has issued a public "call for interest" aimed at Directory Service Providers—entities managing BICs, national IDs, or IBAN ranges—to support its Verification of Payee (VoP) scheme.
These providers are being invited to work with the EPC to validate routing algorithms and ensure the necessary “Account Holding BICs” dataset is available for configuring the new EPC Directory Service (EDS).
The collaboration will also involve testing the IBAN-to-BIC mapping process.
The goal is to enhance routing accuracy and interoperability under the VoP framework, ahead of its implementation in October.
Providers have until 18 July 2025 (midnight, Brussels time) to respond.
All in on Substack
From this week all Northey Point and Payments:Unpacked material has been consolidated into a single Substack presence.
The existing Northey Point blog will soon be decommissioned, the content we post on LinkedIn will reduce and we will barely be found on Twitter / Bluesky.
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