Category Archives: Uncategorized

xxx “Miles and points are cash, that’s what we teach people, and it’s certainly nice when the credit card companies are giving you $1,000, $1,500, $2,000 for getting a single credit card” From Credit card providers fight to stay top of your wallet xxx

There was interesting discussion on Twitter the other day (as there often is) about the relationship between identity and reputation. The discussion was in the context of “fake news” but it raised a number of general points about reputation and the reputation economy that are worth reflecting on. One particular point was whether a reputationContinue reading “POST Reputation means transactions”

xxx One sticky-fingered thief managed to embezzle over $4.8 million from his employer, and then went on to spend $1 million of it on Game of War in-app purchases. From Man steals $1m, spends it on Game of War in-app purchases xxx

xxx Rather, it would provide the internet resources for retail users to access utility central banking as banks already can rather as internet giants like Facebook and Google syndicate their services through application programming interfaces. From Why Central Banks Should Offer Bank Accounts to Everyone – Evonomics xxx

xxx On 23 December 2013, just before Christmas, Belgian merchants faced an outage of the domestic debit card scheme Bancontact for two and a half hours, costing them €51 million in sales.  From The Hidden Costs of Cards xxx

xxx if blockchains (in the sense of useful peer-to-peer databases) are ever going to emerge as a coherent product category, it’s important to distinguish between half-baked and real solutions From How to spot a half-baked blockchain | MultiChain xxx

xxx President Maduro said there were “entire warehouses full of 100-bolivar notes in the [Colombian cities of] Cucuta, Cartagena, Maicao and Buaramanga”. From Venezuela pulls highest-value banknote ‘to strike against mafia’ – BBC News I was quite surprised to read this, given that the 100-bolivar note is worth about 10p, but whatever.

Perry Kramer, vice president and practice lead at consultant Boston Retail Partners, contends that as many as 80 percent of retailers today are already largely cashless “Retailers don’t really want to be banks. It’s not their sweet spot,” he says. “It is much less expensive to process credit and debit than it is cash, becauseContinue reading “Cashing In or Cashing Out? | National Retail Federation”

xxx Banks have said that providing such accounts to the financially vulnerable is a loss-making business for them From Lloyds fails on fee-free in no-frills bank accounts market | Reuters They are. Of course. What almost all of these finally vulnerable people need is a payment account, not a bank account. A simple, pre-paid accountContinue reading “Lloyds fails on fee-free in no-frills bank accounts market | Reuters”

xxx The surge in use, however, comes as the Treasury cautioned that the entrenched use of mobile money in the country posed fiscal risks to the economy if the service collapses. From Mobile Money Africa xxx