The Drift Layer A series on the life of a payment mandate. https://driftlayer.org/ 2026-10-08T00:00:00Z Matthew T. Kirby matthew.kirby@driftlayer.org CC BY 4.0 An obligation in one place, a definition in another https://driftlayer.org/papers/instrument/ 2026-10-08T00:00:00Z 2026-10-08T00:00:00Z Confirmation of Payee puts the duty in a regulator's direction and the content of the check in a rule book someone else maintains. What a later instrument would have to add. Four Measures for Mandate Conformance https://driftlayer.org/papers/definitions/ 2026-10-08T00:00:00Z 2026-09-10T00:00:00Z Evaluation coverage, mandate conformance, divergence incidence, and unauthorised continuation. Coverage is reported first. Version 2 corrects defects found by computing the measures from the Version 1 wording alone; Version 1 is retained and citable. The definitions are free and citable, and stay that way. A liability rule aimed at the wrong control: what the law offers when a delegate exceeds its instruction https://driftlayer.org/papers/liability-rule/ 2026-09-25T00:00:00Z 2026-09-25T00:00:00Z A reading of Part 7 of the Payment Services Regulations 2017 and of the common-law ledger, applied to a payment executed by a software delegate under a standing instruction: which provisions can and cannot reach the case where the close is outside the description the payer gave. The Drift Layer: the clean, fast session that is not proof of authority https://driftlayer.org/papers/the-drift-layer/ 2026-09-14T00:00:00Z 2026-09-14T00:00:00Z Merchant-side friction models lean on proxies for a human nervous system: hesitation, mouse movement, repeated clicks, typos, abandonment. What those signals are worth when there is no nervous system behind the session. Response to HM Treasury, Modernising Payment Services Regulation https://driftlayer.org/papers/hmt-payment-services-consultation-response/ 2026-09-13T00:00:00Z 2026-09-13T00:00:00Z Submitted response to the HM Treasury consultation, answering questions 15 to 18 and 42. Response to the Bank of England, RPIB consultation on the design of future retail payments infrastructure https://driftlayer.org/papers/rpib-consultation-response/ 2026-09-10T00:00:00Z 2026-09-10T00:00:00Z Submitted response to the Bank of England consultation on the design of future retail payments infrastructure.