At first I thought that "the bank is paying interest on the bank account balance. Why Hive should be different?"
But then I read the post.
it encourages movement of HBD from exchanges to wallet savings accounts which lowers the risk profile for users
Other than one or two tests, I currently do not remember using the savings account. I had no reason. But this would give one.
exchanges won’t be receiving interest payments just for holding their customer’s HBD in custody (unless the exchange puts it into a savings account, of course, but in that case it seems likely that they would have to offer some staking reward as part of such a change in order to avoid looking bad in the eyes of their customers).
Why are the exchanges receiving interest payments for holding their customer's HBD in custody in the first place?
This sounds like stealing! The interest payments are belong to the customers, because they own the HBD, not the exchanges.