Hello, dear Sippers, Payments geeks, and Everything in between! 👋
Welcome to the twelfth edition of The Studio Report by Spill the Tea on Payment.
Same brain, same brutal honesty, same analysis, but a NEW NAME to match with the launch of the Research Studio!
More on that topic in my audio hereunder
[THE DIRECTOR’S CUT]
Inside the pivot: Why I’m killing "La Crème de la Crème" to build a Research Studio.
In this month’s memo:
The Sovereign Choice: Why I host, design, and maintain my own infrastructure away from LinkedIn and Substack.
Legibility over Hubris: Reorganizing a year of research, podcasts, and essays into a coherent destination.
The "Anti-Sponsorship" Manifesto: Why I’m opening my library for free instead of selling your attention to sponsors.
Actionable Insights: How the new "Pre-diag tools" will help you think about sovereignty without the paywalls.
Scroll down for the rest of the newsletter👇
ASK THE MENU !
[SYSTEM ANALYSIS] : UCP as way to shift the attention on European sovereignty problem
Dropped at NRF NY 2026 (National Retail Federation), the UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol) is trying to keep the momentum on agentic commerce, even if we are still not sure about the use cases and only noises, for the moment, surround Agentic Commerce.
Big Corps occupy the floor with a flood of News, PR, MVP, diagrams around a concept, to be the first to surf on the waves.
UCP follows the same pattern. UCP acts as a catalyst of conversation, shifting the attention on some more down to earth issues for European Payments Landscape, especially seeing the state of a relationship with the US, currently, and the current escalation of tension with Trump Administration.
What’s worrying is the lack of constitency from European actors on the soveireignty topic, as if the omnipresence of ECB and the digital euro (building a billion euro prospective technocratic cathedral) and over promotion of Wero was enough to “save Europe”
None of both solutions for the moment has shown any signs of being a clear answer, none of them is live, up and running . The roadmap is not clear, Digitial Euro is still on conception phase with strong oppositions, with no formal vote on Parliament, and still many bumps in the legal process to approve it.
While many actors or initiatives works on sovereignity topics, but are considered as “secondary” even sometimes with an existing business in multiple european countries! (Brite Payments, Blue Code, EuroPA, StellaCard, Satispay, Blik, DeluPay, to name a few).
They do not get a full support from authorites or ECB, that appointed EPI as the one and unique and no one else.
It gives the impression, Industry found saviors for European Autonomy (Digital Euro + Wero), we can focus on serious matter like UCP, to be sure our merchants will use us and not them, and stay on the trend chasing of Agentic Commerce with Visa and MC.
This is not a serious matter, and it shows how European are still naive and dependent to Global players, and also how their vision is narrow, it is all or nothing.
Some people will argue, we need Americans for AI, and other technological advance, I will argue back that Americans need us for their product as well.
We are on the same boat, but we need to find our own vest, and UCP is not our priority.
[THE RESEARCH LAB] : IS HEY TEA’S EXPANSION A MODEL FOR AUTONOMY?
Ok, the loop is finally closed and I could publish my long awaited case study on HeyTea, this Chinese tea retailer trying to break through outside of China.
This case is here to study their business model, their strategy to conquer outside China, how Payments are impacting this strategy and why a business cannot choose to use provider to “deal with all the payments complexity” (this is what they said in the PR when Adyen signed with HeyTea)
HeyTea reveals something I am going to talk more in the coming months: how to stay sovereign and autonomous. I think for the ecosystem whether you are a user of payment services, or a provider this questions is becoming a hot topic. It is my conviction
HeyTea serves as an example on how to better think Strategic Autonomy without entering in the jargon of framework and the billion dollar strategy question. It is a down to earth, pratical lens for Payment people to open my library of case studies.
I wanted to publish a premium version containing more insights, because the work of research was dense, but after the long end of year pause, I am wondering if it is a priority.
[STUDIO UPDATES & LIBRARY] : ALL THE OTHER DOCUMENTS FROM STUDIO PUBLISHED LAST MONTH
[FIELD NOTES] : Payment Systems Leapfrogging
I originally wrote this post to promote an essay on my blog (the link is on the STUDIO UPDATES PART).
I already talked about this whole concept of leapfrogging with Goran in my podcast (you can listen to episode here from minute 15:40). A new analysis from a Linked’in post I did not agree, triggered this reflection.
Leapfrogging in Payments simply does not exist, it is a reassurance from countries with a strong scheme led market to analyse emerging market who do not follow their path. Reassuring narrative but missing its goals.
CLOSING WORDS
Next month, I will not talk about HeyTea, I am preparing two other documents, and other blog essays! The studio is on full production mode !
You still can drop a line on [email protected]. I will read it with interest.
See you next month!