The thing that has shocked me about all of this over the last year or so is how seemingly easy it is to just start issuing debit cards to people.

Maybe there's more regulation than I realise (and the emperor has more layers of clothes than Joey Tribbiani), but I'm not seeing it.

I assumed issuance of payment methods was much more strictly controlled than this due to the risk of contagion if the issuer can't meet it's obligations after the transaction (are card payments instant delivery between institutions these days? I always assumed there was a clearing period in the background).