Snippets

xxx "Denmark’s Business Minister Rasmus Jarlov. ‘Fewer people use cash today, so we think there should be a balance between the difficulty and security risks placed on business owners and the benefits of accepting cash,’" From "Something rotten in the state of Denmark? Govt wants stores to stop accepting cash — RT Business News" . xxx

xxx "Generally, economists believe the surge is related to people around the world wanting to hoard cash, a similar force that’s driven the interest in cryptocurrencies. High denomination, high value currency notes have historically been a preferred form of payment for criminals, given the anonymity, lack of transaction record and relative ease with which they can be brought across borders." From "Surge in $100 bills in circulation may be linked to global corruption" . xxx

xxx "Armed with sledgehammers, the organised gangs have stolen £120,000 out of 70 machines in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the past 12 months." From "Cleaning up: vacuum gang sucks money out of parking ticket machines" . xxx

xxx "Under the FSC's plans, established banks must open their payment network to all fintech payment service providers as well as other banks. That would enable customers to use a single application to access their accounts at different banks and make payments. Fees charged on fintech firms for using the network will be lowered to one tenth of the current level to ensure fair competition. Alongside this, amendments to the coutnry's Electronic Financial Transaction Act will mandate all banks to offer payment service providers with standardised APIs for money transfer. It will also prohibit banks from any discriminatory action against payment service providers using their payment system in processing money transfer and charging fees. In the medium to long term, the FSC says it will consider allowing qualified fintech payment service providers direct access to the payment system without relying on banks’ services." From "Korean banks ordered to open up payment ...

xxx Back in the 1930s, according to John Maynard Keynes, one of the jobs of a district commissioner in Uganda was to inspect and evaluate goats. The local unit of currency was the goat, so most goods were priced in goats. So when a local sought to discharge a debt by presenting an animal that was exceptionally sick, old or otherwise undesirable, the district commissioner would rule on whether that particular animal was fit to count as a “goat” for transactional purposes — whether it was, as it were, a negotiable goat. From Cryptocurrencies untether the goat of sovereign tender | Financial Times . xxx

xxx "New Jersey state Sen. Nellie Pou… added that she had asked Amazon, which is operating five pop-up stores and one bookstore in New Jersey, to come up with ideas for how they could serve those without a bank account, but that she did not hear back. Amazon declined to comment." From "Legislation could force stores to take your cash - SFGate" . If I was Amazon, I’d have sent her $10 in Amazon Cash together with recommendations for books about payments.

xxx "Business onboarding, it concluded, is predominantly a manual, paper-based process, which is costly for the bank and slow for the customer, with new regulations, such as AMLD5, only adding complexity. The average time to onboard a business banking customer has increased to 32 days, with the total cost of KYC processes forecasted to increase by nearly 20%." From "Customer onboarding is too costly and slow, concludes report – IBS Intelligence" . xxx