Snippets

xxx "countries will form cryptocurrency unions to regulate currencies and platforms, standardise technology and maintain the stability of the system" From "When China and other big countries launch cryptocurrencies, it will kick off a global revolution" . xxx

xxx "Moscow’s support for Instex prompted a warning from US Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin, who attended a G7 financial meeting in France. ‘If you want to participate in the dollar system you abide by US sanctions,’ Mr Mnuchin said, after discussing Iran with his French counterpart Bruno Le Maire." From "(4) Kremlin throws weight behind EU effort to boost Iran trade | Financial Times" . xxx

xxx "Innocent people have been questioned by police, had computer equipment confiscated and faced arrest when suspected of serious crimes following errors made by internet service providers (ISPs), telecoms companies, police and other public bodies in gathering intelligence through electronic surveillance." From "Innocent people arrested following surveillance blunders, IPCO reveals" . xxx

xxx "In October an investigative report from BuzzFeed detailed how Ads Inc. paid to place deceptive ads on thousands of personal Facebook accounts. Ads Inc. reportedly paid Facebook users $15 to $30 per month for access to their account, then sold those accounts to other marketers for $800 each. By paying Facebook users to post ads on their personal page, Ads Inc. and other companies are able to circumvent Facebook's policies for paid advertisements. Facebook prohibits account rentals and deceptive advertisements, and Facebook has been actively banning accounts sharing posts for Ads Inc. However, Ads Inc. CEO Asher Burke and other employees offered multiple Facebook contractors payment in exchange for reversing the bans" From "Facebook contractor accepted bribes to restore banned accounts: report - Business Insider" . xxx

Oh man! 2017! This was the first public “live five” of technology-driven changes in the secure transactions field that we thought would have a real business impact over the previous year. We’d used the idea internally before, but in 2017 we made the predictions public in the spirit of openness and honesty that we are famed for, to see how the predictions held up. RegTech . I think we did pretty well with this prediction. Interest in regtech has grown throughout the year and the ability of regtech to make real differences in major markets is established. Digital Identity . As we noted, one of the key regtechs, if not the key regtech, is digital identity. It did shoot up the agenda over the year and some interesting initiatives opened up. PSD2 (still). No commentary is needed!. Paying on the Go . We thought that a key use of open APIs will be payments, and very likely mobile payments. MasterCard’s purchase of VocaLink would tend to support this view! Invisible POS .  The shift fro

xxx Gibson first used the word “cyberspace” in 1981, in a short story called “Burning Chrome.” How William Gibson Keeps His Science Fiction Real | The New Yorker : xxx

xxx US officials are also concerned about the possibility that foreign countries will increasingly use mass-market digital currencies, such as Facebook’s planned Libra coin, to avoid sanctions. (1) FBI says blockchain expert aided North Korea | Financial Times : xxx

xxx Mr Couré recently praised an initiative by about 20 large European banks including BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank to create a new digital payments system — dubbed the Pan European Payment System Initiative, or Pepsi. The idea is to enable instant cashless payments through a European rival to ApplePay in the US and Alipay in China [but] the project is becoming bogged down with competition authorities in Brussels for being too much of a closed shop. (1) Central bank talk of launching cryptocurrencies is all bluff | Financial Times : xxx

Huang Qifan, vice chairman of CCIEE (China Center for International Economic Exchanges), speaking at the Inaugural Bund Financial Summit of 2019 in Shanghai, said that " in the current digital age, the payment and settlement methods between enterprises and countries need to be reshaped ”. He also went on to say that cross-border liquidation of China’s renminbi (RMB) is "highly dependent" on SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) system and CHIPS (the US Clearing House Interbank Payments System). He added that the two financial instruments that are "gradually becoming effective tools for the US to exercise global hegemony and carry out widespread jurisdiction control”.

xxx Money has always been a powerful, blunt instrument. It’s an imposition not just of will, but of values. After World War II, the dollar became the foundation of the international monetary system. That gave the U.S. government a special tool. Brace for the Digital-Money Wars - WSJ : xxx

xxx This is not just a poor-world problem. Britain was recently rocked by the “Windrush” debacle, in which dozens of citizens were wrongly deported. But it is a particularly acute problem in sub-Saharan Africa, where one in two people cannot prove his or her identity. It is not for want of effort. Every country in the region has either established or plans to create a universal identity programme. Papers, please - African countries are struggling to build robust identity systems | Middle East and Africa | The Economist : xxx

xxx "The number of card payments in the euro area have more than doubled in a decade as consumers increasingly dispense with the hassle of carrying notes and coins, according to the latest statistics from the European Central Bank. In 2018, card payments accounted for almost half of the total number of non-cash payments across the single-currency area. Credit transfers and direct debits were the second and third most common non-cash payment methods, accounting for approximately 23% each, while e-money and cheques together made up around seven percent. However, the relative popularity of each type of payment service still varies widely across euro area countries. In 2018 card payments accounted for just over 70% of all non‑cash payments in Portugal, compared with around 23% in Germany. The stats show that the number of card payments made by consumers and businesses has more than doubled in the last decade, with an average of 121 card payments per capita in 2018, compared with