Snippets

Doing away with a phone (or a card or a chip in your head) and just going with biometrics is a different issue. Biometric identification is a much harder problem and is fraught with difficulties. It can work very well with limited populations, which is why it is being installed in airports all over the place. I rather like the system going in to Chinese airports where when you walk up to one of the screens displaying flight information it switches to displaying your flight only. Very helpful. And earlier this year at KnowID in Las Vegas I saw a super presentation from US Customs and Border Control talking about the specific use of biometrics in airports as an interesting example of how to use biometric technologies for security but at the same time deliver convenience into the mass market. The investments made in biometrics to allow paperless travel have obvious benefits in terms of security but, as we have found in our other work about the cross-sector exploitation of digital identit...

xxx “You don’t set up an IT system to charge your customers for deposits,” Ulster Bank’s computer says no to negative rates | Financial Times : xxx

xxx Policymakers had encouraged the new competition to the entrenched Lloyds, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Barclays. It does not seem to be working. In 2000 the top six firms accounted for 80 per cent of personal current accounts, according to the FCA. By 2017, the figure had risen to 87 per cent Banks say they are not helped by a contradiction in policy. While the Bank of England has offered more than a dozen new banking licences for new firms to get off the ground, it has also introduced uniquely stringent regulations that banks say make it difficult for them to grow. UK’s bank challengers are fading in fight with big four | Financial Times : xxx

xxx "There’s a new model of tokenization emerging where card-on-file tokenization is done by the payment networks, such as Visa or Mastercard, instead of the merchants." From "Tokenization buzz gets more attention than fundamentals | PaymentsSource" . xxx

xxx As cash use declines, the BRC says card costs continue to rise, resulting in £1.3 billion in third party spending by merchants, up £70 million from 2017. Each transaction cost retailers an average of 5.85 pence per transaction, up 17% (from 4.98 pence). Retail lobby group calls for Government intervention over rising ca... : xxx

xxx Julin stressed that – despite the weight of expectations – no decision has been taken by the Riksbank’s board actually to issue e-kronor. But the approach being investigated is to have a value-based central bank digital currency (CBDC). This would act as a retail digital ‘wallet’ held with the central bank that would offer no interest. There are no current plans to use e-kronor as a transmission tool for monetary policy – for example by imposing negative rates on funds held with the central bank. Julin says the Riksbank is not particularly worried about a substitution of funds away from commercial banks to e-kronor, at least in “in normal times”. Riksbank may not use DLT for e-kronor, says Julin - Central Banking : xxx

xxx "One way to reduce this threat: Central banks could have digital wallets for everyday people, but they wouldn’t pay interest on the balance. Another avenue: Consumers could hold digital cash only at their bank, leaving central banks as remote from everyday savers as they are today." From "The Coming Currency War: Digital Money vs. the Dollar - WSJ" . xxx

xxx "The dollar’s hegemony made sense after World War II, when the U.S. accounted for 28% of global exports. Now, the figure is just 8.8%, according to the IMF. Yet the dollar still dominates international trade." From "The Coming Currency War: Digital Money vs. the Dollar - WSJ" . xxx

xxx "Perhaps most significantly, a world of competing national digital currencies could set up a new kind of currency war. The U.S. dollar has been the world’s dominant currency since the 1920s. But if national digital currencies allow for faster, cheaper money transfers across borders, viable alternatives to the U.S. dollar could emerge, embraced by nations and monetary officials concerned about the dollar’s outsize influence on the global economy." From "The Coming Currency War: Digital Money vs. the Dollar - WSJ" . xxx

xxx Julin stressed that – despite the weight of expectations – no decision has been taken by the Riksbank’s board actually to issue e-kronor. But the approach being investigated is to have a value-based central bank digital currency (CBDC). This would act as a retail digital ‘wallet’ held with the central bank that would offer no interest. There are no current plans to use e-kronor as a transmission tool for monetary policy – for example by imposing negative rates on funds held with the central bank. Julin says the Riksbank is not particularly worried about a substitution of funds away from commercial banks to e-kronor, at least in “in normal times”. “Of course, when it comes to stressed situations and financial surprises, maybe we will see a flight to security,” says Julin. “But maybe that is a good thing, that people can go to a safe place in those kinds of circumstances.” Julin said Riksbank findings indicate there would “be minor problems” of deposits being pulled from commerc...

Some people think we are now coming to the end of what economists call the "Bretton Woods II” era of international monetary arrangements and, as The Economist observed recently (“ Into the woods ”, 17th August), it is not at all clear what is coming next! What will replace the IMF, central banks and commercial banks offering credit when it comes to creating money, facilitating payments and prosperity? The reaction of regulators around the world to one alternative, Facebook’s proposed “Libra” digital currency (more on this later), seems to indicate that the incumbents are not going to give up with out a fight. Yet given the history of financial markets and institutions, and given that we know that change is inevitable as the structures reshape under social, regulatory and technological pressures, it is not good enough to simply say that the incumbents are wrong. In the financial services world, the view that something radical is happening seems to be gaining ground. Just to give o...

xxx "'Virtually everyone is online before age 50,' Dr Blank told the BBC. After that milestone, he said, there was a 'sharp decline' in use of about 2% a year." From "Almost one-fifth of Britons 'do not use internet' - BBC News" . xxx

xxx Shao Fujun, chairman of China UnionPay and a former PBOC official, said that the potential forms and plans for the CBDC are varied, which are still under discussion. "It will have lots of positive impacts," he said, "including tracking the money flow in economic activities and supporting making monetary policy." New digital currency to launch in near future - Chinadaily.com.cn : xxx

xxx Fraudsters had hacked into the estate agent’s email system, and had seen enough to be able to create a fake email from his lawyer, telling him where to send the £45,000. So rather than sending the money to his solicitor’s account, it instead went into an HSBC business account that had been fraudulently set up in Kilburn, north London. The £45,000 deposit for our first home was stolen and the banks did nothing | Money | The Guardian : So: either HSBC did KYC, so they know who the fraudster is and the police can arrest them. Or HSBC didn’t do KYC, in which case the police can arrest HSBC’s head of compliance and HSBC will compensate the defrauded party. Quite simple. But it is? What if the fraudster who opened the destination account was actually a friend of the defrauded party? Oh wait. xxx HSBC has also denied any liability. The £45,000 deposit for our first home was stolen and the banks did nothing | Money | The Guardian : Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they. O...

xxx Unlike WhatsApp and Signal, which reveal users’ private cell phone numbers to the group– or the now-defunct chats within Facebook Groups, which exposed users’ real identities–WeChat allows its users to adopt aliases. Those anonymous usernames act as a privacy shield, giving users control over how their identities are displayed. (Though it’s hidden from other group users, WeChat does require a phone number and real-name verification to sign up, which curtails anonymous troll abuse.) How China is Cashing in on Group Chats – Andreessen Horowitz : xxx

xxx Brands have discovered that user trust is a crucial metric in turning a network into a transaction platform. How China is Cashing in on Group Chats – Andreessen Horowitz : xxx

xxx while group chats in the West are most often populated by our friends, China provides multiple examples of companies using group chats to facilitate deeper customer relationships and social commerce. How China is Cashing in on Group Chats – Andreessen Horowitz : xxx

xxx ING has teamed up with Dutch supermarket chain Albert Heijn and US tech startup AiFi to pilot a cashierless store where customers tap their bank card as they enter, pick up their groceries, and walk out. ING partners Dutch supermarket to trial cashierless store : xxx

Here’s a story I came across that I found so interesting that I discussed it in my book about the history and future of money, “ Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin ”. It is a utopian future fiction that happens to have something to interesting to say about money, which is why it caught my eye. This is somewhat unusual for a utopian vision since, as Nigel Dodd observed in his 2014 book “ The Social Life of Money ", utopias from Plato’s Republic to Star Trek don’t seem to include money at all, never mind M-PESA or Bitcoin. Anyhow, the story that interested me has a ‘guy falls asleep under hypnosis and awakes a century later to find a model society, then finds it’s all a dream’ narrative arc that is hard to read with modern eyes, because the perfect society that the author imagines is a communist superstate that looks like Disneyland but run by Stalin. Everyone works for the government, and since government planners can optimize production, the ‘inefficiency’ of the free market is gone....

xxx Criminals used artificial intelligence-based software to impersonate a chief executive’s voice and demand a fraudulent transfer of €220,000 ($243,000) in March in what cybercrime experts described as an unusual case of artificial intelligence being used in hacking. The CEO of a U.K.-based energy firm thought he was speaking on the phone with his boss, the chief executive of the firm’s German parent company, who asked him to send the funds to a Hungarian supplier. The caller said the request was urgent, directing the executive to pay within an hour, according to the company’s insurance firm, Euler Hermes Group SA. Fraudsters Used AI to Mimic CEO’s Voice in Unusual Cybercrime Case - WSJ : xxx