Thanks to a barrage of regulatory reforms brought in over the past year, 2019 is poised to be a challenging year for European payments firms. Banks are under intense pressure to complete the process of opening up access to third-party providers, while all firms in the online payments chain must grapple with an unprecedented and largely unpopular shake-up of security rules. The cards market remains subject to close attention from competition authorities, while financial crime efforts appear set to focus on anonymous means of payments — not least cryptocurrencies. And for hundreds of firms, this is taking place against the fraught backdrop of the UK’s impending exit from the EU.