Snippets

xxx Corda is a distributed ledger platform, not a traditional blockchain platform. It was never designed to be one. From r3.com » Blog Archive » When is Blockchain not a Blockchain? . xxx

xxx Britain's ATMs are disappearing at a rate of 300 per month across the UK From Three hundred cash machines disappearing each month leaving villages at risk of ATM blackout . xxx

xxx The New Zealand survey, carried out in January by Auckland company Perceptive Research, shows cash may soon be a thing of the past. Only a miniscule seven per cent of Kiwis carry cash as the main form of payment, two-thirds don't carry any at all, and 48 per cent believe it will be gone the way of the dinosaurs within a decade. From When no change is change - NZ Herald . xxx

xxx Australia’s Open Banking use cases are limited in terms of functionality, as it allows only read access, which limits payments initiation/write-access functionality—unlike UK Open Banking and PSD2, where it is allowed. However, in terms of accounts in scope, Australia includes more accounts (such as lending accounts) while these are not included in UK and PSD2. From Open Banking framework comes to Australia | Accenture Banking Blog . xxx

xxx China’s social credit system, a big-data system for monitoring and shaping business and citizens’ behaviour, is reaching beyond China’s borders to impact foreign companies, according to new research. From China’s social credit system ‘could interfere in other nations’ sovereignty’ | World news | The Guardian . xxx

xxx Commercial bank seigniorage represents a structural element of subtraction of net real resources from the economy, with potentially deflationary effects on profits and/or wages, distributional consequences, and frictions between capital and labor – all effects that should be studied carefully. From Monies (old and new) through the lenses of modern accounting | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal . xxx

xxx The idea, if brought to full fruition (and that’s a huge “if”), could transform society. We could have transparent companies that truly reflect the will of their stakeholders, governments that truly reflect the will of their citizens, an internet freed from the corrupting value-extraction of powerful gatekeepers, the end of fake news, and massive automation of daily life for the betterment of humanity. From Why Blockchain Isn't a Revolution - Knowledge@Wharton . Well, we all want that. But, as Kevin goes on to say, more modest goals may be with our reach:  Or at least, we could have solutions that markedly improve on the status quo. From Why Blockchain Isn't a Revolution - Knowledge@Wharton .   Amen to that.

xxx In a letter responding to questions from the UK's Treasury Select committee chair Nicky Morgan, Visa's European boss, Charlotte Hogg, says that 10% of 51.2 million transactions across Europe were affected during the outage, which lasted from 14.35 on 1 June until 00.45 the next day. From Visa says 5.2m payments failed during 10 hour outage . xxx

The Swiss central bank’s own study on the topic found that  Cash is kept for this purpose by 37% of Swiss households. The majority of these respondents say they hold less than CHF 1,000 as a store of value, From Swiss National Bank Payment Survey (2017). The average amount of cash held in a wallet is CHF 133 and the majority of household with cash have less than CHF 1,000. Which does make you wonder what exactly all those CHF 1,000 notes are being used for,

xxx if Mr. Carney were genuinely suggesting that one of the scenarios under consideration by the Bank of England is that it creates a digital currency, then I say more power to him. From Digital != crypto != virtual – 15Mb . xxx

Post-functional cash may have another niche, of course... he can already see a future gap in the market for a restaurant aimed at people who crave the authenticity of notes and coins. “Like buying vinyl,” he asks, only half-joking, “will there be a generation who still enjoy the interaction of cash?” From ‘Cash is just grief’: why shops and bars want to make you pay by card | Life and style | The Guardian . xxx

xxx In Sweden, where 81% of all payments are digital, VAT receipts are up 30% in five years. From ‘Cash is just grief’: why shops and bars want to make you pay by card | Life and style | The Guardian . xxx

xxx In two years, I have had four angry customers – and I’m guessing the ones who get really angry are people operating in cash because they’re fiddling their taxes From ‘Cash is just grief’: why shops and bars want to make you pay by card | Life and style | The Guardian . xxx

xxx Relating this later, to Öl’s co-owner David McCall, I find him irrepressibly upbeat, as if everything is going to plan: “We have probably given away 10 beers to people who didn’t have cards – and a few when Visa went down. But we would rather give you a free beer than give the bank five grand, and we want our staff to feel secure. On our second week, we were broken into [overnight] with sledgehammers. All they could take was one iPad.” From ‘Cash is just grief’: why shops and bars want to make you pay by card | Life and style | The Guardian . xxx

xxx “We pay a processing fee for credit cards, and we employ about 40 people in our fraud department. That’s a cost of doing business with credit cards. When we take cryptocurrency, we have a very small transaction fee with Coinbase, much smaller than our credit card processing fee, and we have no fraud prevention department. It’s like a cash transaction. For us, that is a much cheaper way of doing business.” From (10/1) Home - Quora . You’d think, therefore, that merchants would be stampeding to accept Bitcoin and steering customers towards Bitcoin as a payment mechanism. But this is a very one-sided perspective: the fact that there are no chargebacks with Bitcoin is great for a merchant but what is the incentive for me as a customer? One of the reasons that I use my credit card to buy stuff is precisely so that I can charge back if I get stiffed.

xxx It seems reasonable to suspect that the bulk of criminal activities stamped out by the prohibition of cash would be of questionable benefit to society. From In Defense of Cash - Reason.com . xxx

xxx The rule of law requires that we accept some limits even in the prevention and detection of indefensible crimes. Banning cash might make it more difficult to fence stolen goods, but it does so by preventing a host of noncriminals from engaging in legitimate transactions as they see fit. From In Defense of Cash - Reason.com . xxx

xxx Trust in American internet companies is at a low point, and the most complete answer to why they are choosing to comply with GDPR is that there is no competing U.S. framework for companies to stand behind. This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if the GDPR framework were a good set of laws; however, I worry that many of the ideas that underpin the framework are extremely dangerous to the long-term health and security of democracy, and against American ideals. From It’s Time for an American Internet Privacy Framework — The Information . xxx

xxx The number of over-65s embracing tap-and-go technology has soared, boosting card transactions to become Britain’s primary payment choice From Cash is no longer king as pensioners buy into contactless revolution . xxx

xxx Deutsche Bank has today announced a pilot project with the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the trade association for the world’s airlines, to test a disruptive new payment model. Through the pilot, Deutsche Bank will look to reduce costs for processing payments between airline clients and airlines. Deutsche Bank will collect customer payments directly from consumer accounts in line with the newly revised EU Payments Services Directive, PSD2. Currently, payments are mainly processed via credit and debit transactions. From Deutsche Bank pilots game-changing payments solution with IATA – Newsroom . xxx

xxx "Social credit is preventing people from buying airline and train tickets, stopping social gatherings from happening, and blocking people from going on certain dating websites. Meanwhile, those viewed kindly are rewarded with discounted energy bills and similar perks." From "The odd reality of life under China's all-seeing credit score system | WIRED UK" . xxx

xxx "The social credit schemes are presently a patchwork of public, private and public-private systems that use ongoing surveillance, state records, and snitch-lines to reward and punish Chinese people for behavior that the Chinese establishment frowns on, from indebtedness to beating up quack doctors to chasing pop stars through airports." From "China’s pervasive “social credit” scheme is still in development, but already profoundly shaping public behavior – Boing Boing" . xxx

xxx In 1997 Pope John Paul II declared Isidore of Seville the patron saint of the internet. From The patron saint of the internet is Isidore of Seville, who tried to record everything ever known . xxx

xxx A new regulatory model is needed, one that understands the complexities of data and balances privacy, security and competition across sectors. As we develop one, the playing field between lenders that have adapted to digital on the one hand and tech and fintech companies on the other will become more level. From Fintech threatens to eclipse banks that do not adapt digitally . xxx

xxx A short editorial in the September 19, 1966 issue of the Sandusky Register newspaper in Sandusky, Ohio predicted that life was about to get worse as information, especially financial information, became more centralized. The editorial noted that although the “com puter age” was “in its infancy,” the computerization of financial information would lead to more robbery, more embezzlement, and a complete “assault on personal privacy.” And we can’t say they were wrong. From This 1966 Article About 'Computer Danger' Predicted a Bleak Future of Bank Crimes and Info Leaks . xxx

xxx "The scope of the CMA’s retail banking order is narrower than the access requirements under PSD2, but it is envisaged that the Open Banking API will serve as a means of providing a standardised PSD2-compliant access interface. To this end, we note the proposed extension of the CMA9 specification for Open Banking APIs from personal and business accounts, to all the payment accounts covered by PSD2, i.e. credit cards, e-money wallets and some types of online savings accounts, as well as voluntary participation by other non-CMA9 ASPSPs." From "PSD2 | A revolutionary framework opening up UK payments | Osborne Clarke" . When I took part in the judging of the NESTA Open Up Challenge, I noted that it was a common complaint from innovators developing new financial services that the open banking provisions did not cover credit cards (which is needed to establish credit references and history) and did not extend beyond the “CMA9” so this proposed extension is good ne...

xxx "The interface must allow the TPP to identify itself towards the ASPSP, so the existing practice of TTP access without identification (sometimes referred to as ‘screen scraping’ or ‘direct access’) will no longer be allowed in relation to online payment accounts from 14 September 2019." From "PSD2 | A revolutionary framework opening up UK payments | Osborne Clarke" . xxx

xxx "She said she wanted people to have to disclose their real identity to providers like Facebook and Twitter. However, she said there were good reasons for whistleblowers to still appear anonymous to the public." From "MP Jess Phillips in web plea 'after 600 rape threats' - BBC News" . This is a reframing of what I used to the call the “Clinton Paradox” after the former US Secretary of State. She gave a landmark speech about the internet to the UN (?) in which she said, essentially, that the internet should be available to everybody except for people that we don’t like. How can you have a system under which people have to provide their real identities and yet remain anonymous? Conversely, how can whistleblowers remain anonymous while non-whistleblowers do not? How do you know if I am going to be a whistleblower in the future or not?

Kevin Werbach published a very good article about tokens  on the Knowledge @ Wharton site. He set out a useful taxonomy to help with discussion and debate around the topic, saying that There is  cryptocurrency : the idea that networks can securely transfer value without central points of control; There is  blockchain : the idea that networks can collectively reach consensus about information across trust boundaries; And there are  cryptoassets : the idea that virtual currencies can be “financialized” into tradable assets. I might use a slightly different,  more generalised approach (because a blockchain is only one kind of shared ledger that could be used to transfer digital values around), but Kevin summarises the situation exceedingly well. His perspective is that cryptocurrency is a revolutionary concept but the jury is still out on whether the revolution will succeed, whereas the shared ledger and the assets that might be managed using those shared ledgers are game-chan...

xxx "Mr Modi… went to ground after allegations broke that he and his uncle Mehul Choksi were among the main beneficiaries of an alleged fraud that cost the PNB $1.77bn." From "Indian celebrity jeweller flees to UK claiming political asylum" . xxx

xxx It’s worth noting that Gibson has never claimed to predict the future [but he] has an unmatched knack for analyzing trends and behaviors inherent to modern life and extrapolating them into vivid themes that reveal a kind of raw truth about humanity—much of which centers on our relationship with technology. From Best futurists ever: How William Gibson’s Neuromancer shaped our vision of technology - Ross Dawson . xxx

I’m really looking forward to Future Tense in Zagreb on 2nd October

xxx "Sheth, a personal banking manager at Barclays, was instrumental in opening many of the ‘mule’ accounts, using false ID and address documents." From "UK: Barclays boss who hid cash under sink jailed" . xxx

I just remembered something! Exactly one month ago I went to Amsterdam for Money2020 Europe. I think. Maybe I am remembering this wrong. It was hot and sunny when I got there, so I had an ice cream. I thought I’d try out something new but I wasn’t really paying attention so just chose some random flavour and in I went.   I got a bit confused and thought I was walking into a closet but actually it was a door into a another world. I can't really remember much after that, possibly because of the hot sun on my head. Claire wanted to go to the a night club to meet a friend of hers called C.C. Group and told me to come Next Door so I did. I asked for Mr. Group but no-one answered and Tim said something about open banking so I told everyone there that it was asymmetric. I must have fallen asleep after that because the next thing I remember is this weird dream about running away to join the circus. When I got to the Big Top I saw a lady on a trapeze and some men making white chocolate ...

xxx "Visa says the widespread outage which affected customers in the UK, Europe and abroad was caused by a ‘hardware failure’ and was not the result of unauthorised access." From "Visa outage: payment chaos after card network crashes – as it happened | Business | The Guardian" . xxx   I was caught up in the great Visa disaster of 2018 just the same as everybody else was. I walked into a store bought something and tapped my iPhone on the terminal and was completely shocked to see a message along the lines of “declined”. At the time I just assumed usual levels of incompetency at either the acquirer or the issuer and reached into my bag for another card. This happened to be a MasterCard and it worked perfectly.  It was only a little while later that the Twitter sphere alerted me to the nature and extent of the calamity. The Visa network was, according to frontline reports, down. I checked with some colleagues who have all of the necessary test jiggery-pokery an...