Tag: RBI

Tuesday, 13 October 2026  ·  8 min read

In this issue

Resilience and who pays for the rails

After Sibos, a quieter but revealing week. Mastercard made offline capability compulsory in Europe and framed it as resilience. UK merchants went back to court over what crossing the Channel online costs them. Canada’s long-awaited instant rail is heading for a launch without its biggest banks. The common thread: who controls the rails, and who pays when they fail or get pricier.

A collective action filed at the Competition Appeal Tribunal on 8 October seeks about £700 million (roughly €800 million) from Visa and Mastercard on behalf of about 126,000 UK businesses. It targets the post-Brexit rise in card-not-present interchange on UK–EEA transactions, from 0.2% to 1.15% for debit and from 0.3% to 1.5% for credit. Ann Pope is the proposed class representative, funded by Elm Claims. Mastercard said: “We strongly disagree with the basis of this claim” (Law Gazette; The Paypers).

On 6 October, Santander’s Getnet launched a Single Entry Point covering more than 30 European countries, including local methods such as Bizum and MB WAY, with 20 settlement currencies and payouts to 140 countries (Santander).

On 8 October, the Africa-focused stablecoin firm launched Global Accounts giving businesses named USD, GBP and EUR accounts, with reach to more than 190 countries (Citi Newsroom).

BetaKit reported on 8 October that none of Canada’s six largest banks is expected in the first phase of the Real-Time Rail, targeted for Q4 2026, while the finance department aims to have all major institutions on board by summer 2027. Koho’s Daniel Eberhard called a launch without them “kind of performative” (BetaKit).

Mollie rebuilt Pay by Bank on GoCardless, starting in the Netherlands, with access to more than 2,500 banks and a checkout cut from five steps to three. The rest of Europe follows in 2027 (Mollie).

On 8 October, Mastercard said all new cards in Europe must support offline payments from February 2027, and new and replacement terminals from May 2027. Transactions up to €200 can be approved locally (Mastercard; heise). More in the deep dive.

On 2 October, Mynt priced its IPO at ₱6.60 a share: ₱53.0 billion gross, or up to ₱60.9 billion with the overallotment, which Mynt calls the largest in Philippine history. Listing as GCASH is set for 20 October (Mynt).

A Visa survey of 14,250 consumers in 14 markets found that 46% are likely to use stablecoins within five years, against 16% who had used them in the past year. Of the 66% who are aware of stablecoins, only 6% understood them accurately (Visa).

Following an HKMA–Bank Negara Malaysia meeting on 2 October, the two central banks agreed workstreams on stablecoins, RTGS connectivity and a CMU–RENTAS link (HKMA).

On 7 October, the RBI raised the repo rate by 25bp to 5.50% and moved to a “calibrated tightening” stance (RBI). It also announced Account Aggregator interoperability measures, to be implemented by 31 December 2026 (RBI).

On 5 October, stablecoin card issuer Rain applied to the OCC for Rain National Trust Bank. The bank would provide custody, reserve management for GENIUS Act issuers, and stablecoin issuance and redemption, but would take no deposits and make no loans. Brandon Soto, a former Square Financial Services CFO, is the proposed CEO (PR Newswire).

Mastercard’s offline mandate and the politics of resilience

Most scheme rule changes are dull. This one is a statement. From February 2027, every new Mastercard card issued in Europe must be able to pay offline. From May 2027, so must every new and replacement terminal. When the network or the power goes down, terminals will be able to approve transactions up to €200 locally and send them for settlement once the connection returns (Mastercard).

The trigger is recent memory. Mastercard points to the 2025 blackout in Spain and Portugal, which left around 55 million people unable to pay digitally. Brice van de Walle put it simply: “When the power or network goes down, people still need to buy food, fuel and medicine.” Offline capability is already live in Denmark, Sweden, Estonia and Latvia; heise also carries a response from Visa (heise).

Why does it matter beyond outages? Three reasons.

First, sovereignty politics. Europe’s debate over its dependence on US card schemes, which drives the digital euro, Wero and last week’s European Network for Payments, has focused on control. Mastercard is reframing the question around resilience, where a global card network with offline capability looks like part of the answer rather than the problem.

Second, risk shifts. Offline approval means the issuer cannot check the balance or run real-time fraud scoring. That risk is managed with limits, such as the €200 cap, and the liability rules between issuer and acquirer will need careful reading. Fraudsters read outage news too.

Third, cost and timing. Because the rule applies only to new and replacement terminals, coverage will build gradually, and acquirers, vendors and smaller issuers all face certification and card-profile work.

The week’s other card story shows why looking indispensable matters: the same schemes face a £700 million UK claim over cross-border interchange. Being essential infrastructure is good politics when your pricing is in court.

What to watch next: whether Visa answers with a Europe-wide mandate of its own, how far issuers set their offline limits below the €200 ceiling, and whether retailers that suffered in the Iberian blackout start asking acquirers for offline-ready terminals before the 2027 deadlines. If they do, the rollout could run ahead of the rulebook.

offline authorisation

Offline authorisation is when a card terminal approves a payment without contacting the issuer in real time. The chip and terminal apply risk rules locally, such as amount limits and counters of consecutive offline transactions, and the payment is cleared once connectivity returns. The floor limit is the amount above which a transaction must go online for approval. Mastercard’s new European rule sets local approval at up to €200 (Mastercard).

Before offline chips there was the imprinter: the “zip-zap” or “knuckle buster” that pressed an embossed card onto carbon-copy slips. Used from the 1950s and 60s, imprinters were replaced by electronic terminals in the 1980s and 90s but survived for years as an outage backup (Wikipedia). Resilience used to be made of carbon paper.