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Showing posts from March, 2017

Cash free for a month: an experiment in new ways to pay

xxx "But did paying for everything with a card mean he spent more? ‘It’s certainly less tangible, you don’t see the money flowing in and out but I don’t think I’ve spent more or less than I would otherwise have,’ he says, adding that it can be even easier to keep a track on mobile payments with your phone, as you get the detail immediately on how much you’ve just spent – and on what. ‘It certainly makes expenditure on small transactions much more visible,’ he says. So, if you’re spending an excessive amount on regular coffees for example, you’ll learn soon enough once you start using the app." Cash free for a month: an experiment in new ways to pay xxx

How do you define RegTech?

xxx RegTech has been supplying some of the best use cases in banking. From the early customer engagement stages like KYC and Identity to compliance management, risk and reporting, the potential to reduce costs and create new customer engagement opportunities is tremendous for RegTech. Banks are also actively looking for solutions to better interfaces with regulators. From How do you define RegTech? xxx

Don't force people to use tap and go cards, banks are told | Daily Mail Online

xxx n a letter written to the committee and published today, the chairman of the Financial Conduct Authority, John Griffith-Jones, said the regulator is already working with banks to provide more protection for customers. He said measures being looked at include ‘removing any onus on customers to identify fraudulent transactions’ From Don't force people to use tap and go cards, banks are told | Daily Mail Online xxx

Financial fraud data for 2016 published : Financial Fraud Action UK

The new card fraud figures for the UK have just been released. Basically things can only get worse. Losses due to payment card fraud were £618.0 million, an increase of nine per cent from £567.5 million in 2015. From Financial fraud data for 2016 published : Financial Fraud Action UK Card spending only increased six per cent in comparison. In other words, fraud is growing 50% faster than spending. That doesn’t sound an acceptable state of affairs to me. Something should be done. It isn’t only card fraud that’s worrying. Remote banking fraud losses totalled £137.1 million, a 19 per cent decrease from £168.6 million in 2015. From  Financial fraud data for 2016 published : Financial Fraud Action UK You have to be careful with this figure because it is giving the losses to banks

Danish banks add Dankort payments to mobile wallets

xxx "Nets is using HCE technology from Japanese card issuer JCB as the foundation for the mobile payment system. The firm says Danish supermarkets are among the first merchants to accept Dankort mobile payments, via a Bluetooth acceptance device that sits next to their conventional payment terminals. " Danish banks add Dankort payments to mobile wallets xxx

Government must have power to spy on Whatsapp users' messages, Home Secretary Amber Rudd demands | The Independent

xxx "Whatsapp must allow security services to access users’ messages in the wake of the Westminster terror attack, Home Secretary Amber Rudd has demanded. Ms Rudd said it was ‘unacceptable’ that the security services were unable to see messages sent by terrorists." Government must have power to spy on Whatsapp users' messages, Home Secretary Amber Rudd demands | The Independent The flaw with this argument is, of course, that if there is a backdoor in WhatsApp so that police can read terrorists messages, then the terrorists will be able to use the same backdoor to read the message between law enforcement, MPs and everybody else. xxx "A police officer has been jailed today after she accessed the police national computer database to help a friend who was once suspected of involvement in Britain's biggest ever cash robbery. " Police officer jailed after using her force computer to help a criminal suspect in Britain's biggest cash robbery | Daily Ma

POST Passport, boarding pass, face, Amex card, paperback

    xxx "British Airways is introducing technology that will allow passengers to go through boarding gates at Heathrow using facial recognition." British Airways introduces boarding without passports as it installs facial recognition at Heathrow Once again, this is about biometrics as a convenience technology, not as a security technology. If you been in a BA boarding queue recently, you’ll know how convenient it is to board using the QR code on your phone and how inconvenient it is to fumble around getting your passport out to show at the gate and how annoying it is to be in the line behind people who put the phone down to rummage around in a bag to find the passport and then have to mess around unlocking the phone again because it locked while they were rummaging. So: if BA can do the passport scan and face capture away from the boarding gate they can make for a much smoother boarding process. It helps if the boarding pass is real, of course. "Britain on the F

UK visionaries drag us kicking and screaming into the 1770s

You can’t say that London isn’t a fintech powerhouse and epicentre of the revolution that is forging a new financial services industry in the white heat of old technology. Wait, what? "The UK is to roll out an image-based cheque clearing system in October that will slash processing times from six 'weekdays' to one day" UK to roll out image-based cheque clearing system I’d forgotten that some people still use cheques. I haven’t seen one for ages and haven’t the slightest idea where my chequebook is. I can’t even think what I might need a cheque for. In the last couple of weeks I’ve paid our gardener, window cleaner, a building contractor and my youngest son using my mobile phone. I have absolutely no need for cheques. Still, they are important to the powers that be. "These changes will put cheques firmly in the 21st century" UK to roll out image-based cheque clearing system Actually, it will put cheques firmly in the 18th century, which is when they

Why Ethereum is great for payments – Medium

xxx "A clear lesson from the early days of bitcoin is that regular users suck at managing private keys." via Why Ethereum is great for payments – Medium They do indeed. And speaking as user, I don’t want to get better and managing private keys. I want someone else to do it, preferably someone who has some experience of this sort of thing, someone who has issued millions of keys and had to manage them, and ideally someone who is heavily regulated so that I have some expectation of redress in the event of a problem. Such would be a significant “incentive function” of banks if they can get their act together to do it.

For Credit Cards, Canceling The Need To Cancel | PYMNTS.com

xxx "A dashboard helps create separate card numbers and one-time-use numbers or merchant-specific ones. In this manner, a user can set up a ‘Netflix card or a Geico card’ that attends to payments for each of those relationships," via For Credit Cards, Canceling The Need To Cancel | PYMNTS.com This is certainly an interesting proposition and good luck to Aaron and his team with taking it forward. But I don’t want a Netflix card or a Geico card, I want a Netflix identity and a Geico identity. Not just a card number, but a name and address and e-mail and… reputation. If I use a different card number at Ashley Madison and William Hill, then hackers (or, worse still, marketers) can still see that the name and address is the same and then reasonably conclude the same person is behind both usernames. We need to make it hard for attackers of any kind to do this kind of thing.  

POST Food for thought on the blockchain

xxx "Combined with state data on things like temperature, motion or chemical composition collected from sensors on equipment (aka the internet of things) blockchain could cost-effectively confirm everything that has ever happened to the food someone is about to eat." via  Blockchain For Supply Chain: Enormous Potential Down The Road That sounds appealing, but it’s not the straightforward. As I explained in a Tomorrow’s Transactions blog post on this subject, the blockchain may be amazing but it isn’t magic. I share this authors suspicion that there may be a very fundamental and very disruptive connection between shared ledger technologies and thingternet technologies, but how would this help in practice? Let’s look at a specific supply chain failure. The example I used before was that of the famous Amex salad oil scandal.           "The Great Salad Oil Swindle was carried out by Anthony ‘Tino’ De Angelis, who traded vegetable oil (soybean oil) futures which was a

POST Inclusion is about identity not bank accounts

xxx "If the plans of the upcoming payment bank by IndiaPost are to go by, over 112 crore Indians who have an Aadhaar number till now will be able to transact - send and receive money - only on the basis of the Aadhaar number irrespective of the fact whether it is linked to a bank account or not." Pocket: Your 12-digit Aadhaar number could soon be your single point payment address xxx

Pocket: World of Warcraft's gold rush has upended Blizzard’s economy

xxx "The WoW Token is a simple market. All the tokens are identical, and have a static real-money cost. When there are more people wanting to buy gold than people wanting to sell gold, the price falls. When there are more people looking to sell gold than buy it, the price rises." Pocket: World of Warcraft's gold rush has upended Blizzard’s economy When Blizzard (the people who run World of Warcraft) first "Prices fluctuated so much because nobody knows what a WoW Token is worth now. Since the WoW Token interface also doesn’t let you know how many tokens are actually for sale at any given time, it’s unclear whether buyers and sellers are rushing into and out of the market at different price points, or whether a single gold-rich buyer using a low point as an opportunity to liquidate can send the price skyrocketing." Pocket: World of Warcraft's gold rush has upended Blizzard’s economy xxx

Crystal clear: Creating hyper-transparent property markets - JLL Real Views

xxx The issue of transparency is going to play a major role in the allocation of an avalanche of global commercial investment into real estate over the next decade. With total sums at stake predicted to rise from US$700 billion to over $1 trillion a year by the mid 2020s, according to JLL, countries and cities which meet investor demands on transparency will be best placed to attract these capital flows. From Crystal clear: Creating hyper-transparent property markets - JLL Real Views xxx

Talent follows the cash into transaction banking

xxx In 2016, banks made $209bn from transaction banking, compared with the $172bn made by their trading arms, according to the data, which cover global, regional and local banks. This is almost three times the $77bn that banks made from advising clients on M&A and helping them raise finance. Transaction services also eclipsed lending revenues for every year since 2011. From Talent follows the cash into transaction banking xxx

POST Accounting is so last millenium

In my book “Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin” I look at how this infrastructure hs evolved. Double entry Accounting is one thing, but it is not the whole story. When the At very high level, then, accounting led to the creation of modern markets and it’s cousin, auditing, set in place the infrastructure necessary for large-scale enterprise and modern prosperity. But they are not perfect. They are backward looking. But there is another way. I co-authored a paper on this some time ago and co-opted the architectural term “ambient accountability” to describe the combination of practical Byazantine fault tolerance consensus protocols and replicated incorruptible data structure (together forming “shared ledger” technology) to deliver a transactional environment that has a form of controlled transparency (“translucency”).  As XXX from R3CEV describes this new environment, it is much simpler to operate and regulate The reconciliation comes as part of the fact recording; not after. Organisati

Smart condoms: like Fitbit for sex – and you can even share your stats | Life and style | The Guardian

xxx So it’s a Fitbit for your old chap? Basically, yes, although I doubt that will be the slogan, for a number of reasons. You charge it with a USB cable and sync the data with your phone in the usual way. Then share it online, if you wish. From Smart condoms: like Fitbit for sex – and you can even share your stats | Life and style | The Guardian xxx

CommBank provides ID verification for gig economy marketplace users

    xxx Now, in an effort designed to provide an extra layer of trust, a pilot will see members who bank with CBA able to add a 'CommBank Identified' badge to their Airtasker profile if the two firms have the same name and date of birth on file. From CommBank provides ID verification for gig economy marketplace users xxx Tim Fung, CEO, Airtasker, says: "We’re creating a reputation passport, which will help people know exactly who they are dealing with and what they are qualified for." From  CommBank provides ID verification for gig economy marketplace users xxx

POST Cash and its alternatives

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Why bother with the blockchain for identity?

As my former colleague Salome Parulava rather succinctly described last year, we must distinguish between two different areas of overlap between  First, “ Identity for Blockchain ”, assumes that if blockchain platforms… gain adoption that is at least 10% as widespread as the industry’s attention to them today, there will be a need for a robust and reliable identity layer to manage KYC, AML, authentication and authorisation processes for shared ledger applications. From “Identity for Blockchain” vs “Blockchain for identity”. What’s in it for Airbnb? | Consult Hyperion xxx xxx Second approach could be called “ Blockchain for Identity ” and it formulates a separate self-sustained class of use cases. It assumes that blockchain technology can enable solutions to known identity problems From  “Identity for Blockchain” vs “Blockchain for identity”. What’s in it for Airbnb? | Consult Hyperion It’s this latter category that interests me at the moment. As Sally pointed out last year,

UK card payments continued upward trend in 2016

snippet 210000UK card payments continued upward trend in 201602 March 2017  |  1961 views  |  0Source: UK Cards AssociationConsumers spent £647 billion using payment cards in 2016, new figures show. There were 14.8 billion card transactions in 2016, equivalent to 40.5 million transactions a day or 469 a second, data from The UK Cards Association shows. Three-quarters of retail spending (76.4 per cent) was on payment cards. Retail spending on cards in 2016 was £298 billion, compared to £290 billion in 2015. The majority of card spending in 2016 was made via debit cards, which accounted for £461 billion of spending. Total card spending in 2015 was £620 billion. Contactless payments accounted for £25 billion of spending [From UK card payments continued upward trend in 2016 ] snippet

New Blockchain Partnership Proposes Solution for Remote Voting - CryptoCoinsNews

The news that somewhere in South Korea some sort of local government had some sort of election and recorded the votes on some sort of blockchain restarted some discussions about whether electronic voting might be just around the corner. As I have often suggested, the idea of using smartphones instead of ballot papers seems rather obvious. With a sample ballot on their smartphone a voter will only need to bring their phone with them when the polls open; [From New Blockchain Partnership Proposes Solution for Remote Voting - CryptoCoinsNews ] Great. But hold on... it’s projected that through an app built on the blockchain voters won’t have to make the trip to polls in the future. [From  New Blockchain Partnership Proposes Solution for Remote Voting - CryptoCoinsNews ] Oh dear. This sort of system might be acceptable for shareholder voting and that sort of thing, but it certainly isn’t acceptable for either local or national government elections for a variety of reasons all of wh

Pensioners incomes exceeds working families | Government Business

snippet Research has revealed that pensioners in the UK are now an average of £20 a week better off than working households. [From Pensioners incomes exceeds working families | Government Business ] snippet snippet Median income among pensioners is projected to rise twice as quickly as that for the rest of the population [From  Historically weak growth in living standards set to continue; low-income households with children to fare worst - Institute For Fiscal Studies - IFS ] snippet

Getting into the Flows – Project Breakthrough – Medium

xxx Regulation — ‘aligning financial regulation with the Global Goals … to make sustainable asset classes more investible at lower cost.’ From Getting into the Flows – Project Breakthrough – Medium So, if we look at the patten of the co-evolution of money and technology what we would expect to see is the sustainable assets classes as a mechanism for deferred payment that becomes a store of value and then a means of exchange. The means of exchange then becomes a currency that denominates other transactions. Richard Roberts goes on to identify candidate currencies based on which 

AWS's S3 outage was so bad Amazon couldn't get into its own dashboard to warn the world • The Register

Remember, the blockchain is uncensorable and resilient, a permanent record of transactions always available everywhere, so in cases of (for example) natural disasters then it can provide an identity infrastructure. In fact, the five-hour breakdown was so bad, Amazon couldn't even update its own AWS status dashboard: its red warning icons were stranded, hosted on the broken-down side of the cloud. From AWS's S3 outage was so bad Amazon couldn't get into its own dashboard to warn the world • The Register Ah. Well, let’s suppose that wise organisations employ people who know how to design blockchains properly (so that all the consensus-forming nodes do not sit in virtual machines in a single data centre, for example).

Money and intelligent design

The good people at BBVA Research recently published a paper on central bank digital currencies ( Central Bank Digital Currencies , Gouveia et al, March 2017) in which, amongst other conclusions, the authors say that “we also consider it likely that a scenario in which CBDC is anonymous, universal and non-yield bearing will be implemented”. But why is this “likely”? Why would any central bank bother setting up the form of distributed ledger that the authors envisage in order to implement something of such obvious utility to criminals, terrorists, money-launderers, tax-evaders and corrupt politicians? I’m not sure about this as a trajectory for money in the always-on robo-economy. While this report talks in general about central bank digital currency (or “digital fiat” as I prefer to label it), it refers repeatedly to distributed ledger technology (i.e., shared ledgers) as the mechanism for managing this currency. It also refers to “blockchain technology” in the Executive Summary, altho

Orange places 1,700 ID card readers at prepaid sales points - Telecompaper

xxx Orange is forecasting 1,700 outlets with a Famoco terminal, which can verify the identify of a prepaid customer. This has become a requirement since December for all prepaid providers in Belgium…The system can within seconds make an identification using the government’s CheckDoc database.From Orange places 1,700 ID card readers at prepaid sales points - Telecompaper xxx xxx Orange Digital Ventures recently made an investment of EUR 11 million into Famoco, a maker of scanners…. Orange started using the terminals in its own shops. Now, supermarket gas stations and other sales points will use the technology. From  Orange places 1,700 ID card readers at prepaid sales points - Telecompaper xxx