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Europe should lessen its reliance on US payment systems as the prospects of a Trump presidency increases risks around the critical infrastructure’s resilience, the chief executive of Stripe-backed UK tech group TrueLayer warned.

Francesco Simoneschi told the Financial Times that building more resiliency in European payments had become increasingly urgent in light of the upcoming US presidential election.

“Maybe [the US election] is an election that will take us a little bit into a different world,” said Simoneschi, who heads the London-based open banking company. The TrueLayer chief added that one risk would be a shift away from the “integration that has been happening between UK and Europe and the US” in the past 50 years.

“A big portion of payments in Europe and the UK [relies on] US companies, that’s the reality. This critical infrastructure is so stacked from a US standpoint that you may be the target of global actors having a go at that infrastructure.”

The need for independence had been made all the more evident after a global IT outage in July caused by tech company CrowdStrike showed the risks of over-reliance on a single technology, he said.

Simoneschi’s comments come at a time when competition in the UK payments market is under increased scrutiny.

The Payments Systems Regulator is probing the fees charged by Visa and Mastercard, a duopoly that accounts for 95 per cent of all debit and credit card payments in the country. Mastercard also owns Vocalink, which powers the country’s faster payments scheme, which processes bank transfers.

TrueLayer, which was valued at more than $1bn in a 2021 fundraising led by Tiger Global, has announced a series of partnerships for its “pay by bank” solution, which allows customers to make online purchases without going through Visa and Mastercard.

Proponents of pay by bank technology argue it will disrupt ecommerce by allowing consumers to make purchases without having to type out their card numbers, and that it will give retailers a cheaper alternative to Visa and Mastercard, which have increased their fees in recent years.

Simoneschi said Europe had “woken up” to the urgency of building payment independence such as through the European Payments Initiative (EPI), a pan-European card scheme backed by banks to allow bank transfers and digital wallet transactions.

Open banking was seen as a big promise for UK fintech when it was mandated by competition authorities in 2017. However it has since struggled to achieve mass adoption and break the duopoly of Visa and Mastercard.

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The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House

Washington’s top climate diplomat John Podesta has pressed Chinese leaders to come up with ambitious plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 in one of the final meetings between the world’s two largest polluters ahead of the UN COP29 climate summit in November. 

Podesta visited China last week along with other US officials for meetings with his Chinese counterpart Liu Zhenmin and China’s foreign minister Wang Yi, as well as other ministries involved in climate and the environment.

They discussed their fresh targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2035, as well as climate finance — both expected to be central to wider UN climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, later this year. 

The UN summit will start soon after the US presidential election, with preparations being made in the shadow of a threat by Donald Trump to withdraw from global climate action were he to win.

Chinese state media reported after the Podesta meetings that Beijing had called on Washington “to maintain consistency with policies and make concerted efforts with China to cope with global challenges”.

A readout from the state department said the two sides discussed their efforts to tackle methane and nitrous oxide emissions, both powerful non-CO₂ greenhouse gases, and committed to holding a summit on the topic as part of the Baku talks. Curbing these emissions is regarded as among the cheapest and fastest ways of limiting global warming in the near term.

China is the world’s largest polluter on an annual basis, contributing about 30 per cent of emissions, but has also led the world in deploying renewable energy and had met its 2030 renewable targets by this year.

By some estimates, China’s greenhouse gas emissions may have also peaked this year, in part because of an economic and property slowdown which has suppressed energy demand and the carbon-heavy production of steel and cement. Views differ on whether this represents a long-term decline, and how much future demand will rely on the rollout of new coal-fired power plants.

The country is also suffering from climate change, with the Chinese Meteorological Administration reporting last week that the average temperature in August was the hottest in six decades at 22.6C, or 1.5 C higher than last year. “Frequent and highly destructive rainstorms [and] large scale heatwaves,” were reported.

The trip to Beijing was Podesta’s first since taking over as Washington’s chief climate diplomat after John Kerry stepped down last year. It comes just months before countries convene for COP29, where both the US and China will be critical to any deal. 

At COP28 in Dubai almost 200 countries agreed to move away from fossil fuels “in a just, orderly and equitable manner” to reach net zero emissions by 2050. However, in the recent Bonn climate talks, countries struggled to make further progress.

Under a road map set out in the UN process, this year countries must also agree on replacing a $100bn annual goal to help developing countries tackle climate change. So far, participants have disagreed over what sources of finance should be included, and who should contribute. 

Developing countries maintain that the developed world, which historically had caused the greatest emissions, should be held financially responsible for damages from climate change.

Richer, western countries say that wealthier developing nations, such as China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, India and Brazil, should also contribute towards a global fund.

Another priority in Baku will be talks on carbon market principles.

Washington — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are set to face off for the first time this week as Election Day quickly approaches — with the race upended since the last debate matchup between Trump and President Biden.

Hosted by ABC News at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, the debate could be the only time Trump and Harris go head to head on the debate stage.

Tuesday’s debate follows weeks of back and forth over whether the matchup would occur — and under what terms. Though the president and former president agreed in May to participate in two presidential debates, one hosted by CNN in June and another hosted by ABC in September, the second debate was thrown into question once Mr. Biden left the race in July. 

Trump suggested on multiple occasions that he would not participate at all, criticizing the network. But after Harris baited the former president, accusing him of “backpedaling” on the debate, Trump agreed to the Sept. 10 matchup, while proposing additional debates on Fox and NBC News. Harris only agreed to the ABC debate.

What we know about the debate structure so far

Tuesday’s 90-minute debate, which will be moderated by ABC anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis, will take place without an audience. It’s also expected to feature two commercial breaks, when campaign staff will not be allowed to interact with the candidates, among other rules that mirror the rules at the CNN debate.

During the debate, the candidates will have two minutes to answer questions and for rebuttals, along with an extra minute for follow-ups, clarifications or responses, ABC outlined. No props or pre-written notes are permitted onstage. 

The candidates will have two minutes to deliver closing statements, and Trump will deliver the final statement after winning a coin toss, ABC said. There will be no opening statements. 

Candidates’ microphones will only be live when it’s their turn to speak, an issue that the two sides have been at odds over for weeks. While the Harris campaign argued that both candidates’ microphones should be on throughout the debate, Trump said his campaign agreed to the same rules regarding microphones in place for the first presidential debate. The Harris campaign ultimately agreed to have the microphones muted when a candidate isn’t speaking, although the campaign said a pool of reporters will be present and will be able to hear what a muted candidate may be trying to say. 

The Harris campaign wrote in a letter to ABC obtained by CBS News that the vice president “will be fundamentally disadvantaged by this format,” while noting that the campaign accepted the terms so as not to “jeopardize the debate” from occurring. 

How Donald Trump is preparing for the debate

Heading into the debate, both Trump and Harris highlighted their policy platforms on the campaign trail in battleground states throughout the country, where they remained locked in a close race with fewer than 60 days before Election Day. Trump campaigned in North Carolina and Wisconsin in recent days. 

The former president has been reviewing policy positions with advisors in the lead up to the debate, sources familiar with the former president’s preparation told CBS News, though his preparations are characterized as somewhat informal and include speaking with voters and engaging with the media. 

Trump told “Good Morning New Hampshire” last week that he’s “been preparing all my life for this debate.”

“So, you know, I do. I have meetings on it,” Trump added. “We talk about it, but there’s not a lot you can do.”

How Kamala Harris is preparing for the debate

Harris traveled to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Thursday to prepare for the presidential debate, according to campaign officials and advisers to the vice president. She is set to remain in the area until Tuesday’s debate.

The vice president and her team have used the time to go back to the drawing board on their debate strategy, a senior campaign official told CBS News, after the decision was made to keep candidates’ microphones muted during the debate when they aren’t speaking. While Harris had planned to pepper Trump with questions, her campaign has had to seek out a new approach, fearing that her ability to most effectively engage with the former president will be hampered by the microphone restrictions. 

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who was involved in Harris’ debate preparations against former Vice President Mike Pence in 2020, praised Harris’ debate skills and intellect on Sunday, telling CNN’s “State of the Union” that “she is a very focused and disciplined leader.” But he noted that “it will take almost superhuman focus and discipline to deal with Donald Trump in a debate.”

“It’s no ordinary proposition, not because Donald Trump is a master of explaining policy ideas and how they’re going to make people better off,” Buttigieg said. “It’s because he’s a master of taking any form or format that is on television and turning it into a show that is all about him.” 

When and how to watch the presidential debate

The debate will begin at 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Sept. 10. CBS will have coverage beginning at 8 p.m. ET. Find your local CBS station here or tune into CBS News 24/7. 

Olivia Rinaldi,

Aaron Navarro,

Nidia Cavazos,

Melissa Quinn,

contributed to this report.