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New Zealand’s new anti-money laundering (AML) levy signals a global shift towards “club-good” regulation, with developed markets increasingly treating supervisors as industry-funded service providers rather than state-funded public goods, impacting jurisdictions’ competitiveness.

The scale, speed and accessibility of modern payments have fundamentally altered the risk landscape, shifting fraud from an isolated criminal activity to a systemic challenge embedded in everyday financial services. European regulators are increasingly reframing fraud as a core consumer protection challenge rather than simply a financial crime risk. This is not limited to one segment of the market: banks, payment institutions, electronic money (e-money) firms and investment platforms are all exposed. Fraud comprises a spectrum of typologies that continue to evolve alongside technological and behavioural changes. Most prevalent forms across Europe include: Authorised push payment (APP) fraud. Social engineering and impersonation scams. Phishing and smishing attacks. Account takeover fraud. Romance scams. Artificial intelligence (AI) fraud. As payment journeys become more seamless and embedded, often designed to minimise friction, fraudsters are exploiting the same efficiencies to execute scams at scale, with reduced detection windows and greater cross-border reach. Several structural drivers that are involved in fraud acceleration include: Mobile wallets. Online banking and embedded

Payment service providers (PSPs), fintechs, and digital asset firms have traditionally scaled by obtaining money transmitter licenses (MTLs) across many US states, each with its own rules and oversight. That model is now being challenged.

The newly proposed legislation represents one of the most ambitious attempts to date to break banks’ monopoly over US payments infrastructure by extending direct access to federal payment systems to qualified nonbank firms.

New federal frameworks are reshaping US supervisory rules, and banks, nonbanks and fintechs will all need to recalibrate their strategies for a landscape focused more on activity than identity.

The Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) changes to the Senior Managers & Certification Regime (SM&CR) are designed to reduce administrative burden and improve proportionality without weakening individual accountability. The reforms were developed jointly with the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and apply to all SM&CR firms, and further updates are expected later in 2026, subject to legislative change by HM Treasury.

After years of industry advocacy and growing acknowledgment from regulators that the current anti-money laundering (AML) framework is not operating as effectively as it should, two significant proposals signal where the future of AML compliance may be headed in the United States.

A Reserve Bank of India (RBI) discussion paper has proposed a series of measures to address rising fraud levels in digital payments and ensure that consumers adopting new modes of payment are not making themselves more vulnerable to scams.

Regulated firms across Europe can start to prepare in earnest for the new payments regulation framework, as the long period of high-level speculation ends and the roadmap for implementation becomes clear.

Finland’s new gambling laws ban crypto-assets to curb harm, yet this restriction may inadvertently drive players toward offshore sites, potentially clashing with EU MiCA regulations regarding digital payment parity.