With the larger foreign exchange prime brokerage houses restructuring and new entrants offering new types of services, Frances Faulds asks whether regulatory changes have contributed to the demise of the industry or simply to its reinvention.

The Chinese government and the People’s Bank of China are yet to disclose the formal details concerning China’s International Payment Platform, but there is little doubt that the new system will fundamentally change the renminbi clearing market as well as the future of offshore renminbi hubs.

Both the EU and New York are looking to bring digital currencies under a full regulatory regime, but their approaches are rather different.

Emerging market currencies benefited handsomely from the US central bank’s huge quantitative easing programme. With that now being unwound and with China slowing, emerging currencies are now in retreat. Those from economies with weak fundamentals are especially vulnerable. 

Legal battles over MasterCard and Visa’s interchange fees have raged for years in various markets around the world, but now the European Commission is pushing ahead with legislation that will cap the level of the fees, which will have major repercussions for card-issuing banks and the payments market.