Category Archives: Uncategorized

xxx Paying by phone was commonplace [in Stockholm], and I didn’t even get a weird look when I scanned a QR code at a grocery store checkout and wordlessly strolled away with my basket of smoked meats. From What The Mark Of The Beast Taught Me About The Future Of Money – BuzzFeed News xxx

xxx A political battle between the UN-recognised Tripoli government led by Fayez Sarraj and the Tobruk-based parliament loyal to General Khalifa Haftar in the east has led to parallel splits in the country’s financial institutions, with two central banks threatening to circulate rival Libyan dinar banknotes in the country. From Battle of the banknotes asContinue reading “POST War by another means”

xxx Releasing software as an API allows those companies to pursue a number of different adoption routes. Rather than trying to sell specific industry verticals or use cases, often the customer is a developer, leading to an extremely low-friction sales process. From The rise of APIs | TechCrunch xxx

xxx Dr Francis Wangusi, Director General of the Communications Authority of Kenya, said… “The requirements for opening a bank account were and still are stringent and unfavourable to low income earners”. From Why M-Pesa is a successful story in Kenya | News24 Nigeria xxx xxx Registration was very simple and the costs were cheap. AlsoContinue reading “Why M-Pesa is a successful story in Kenya | News24 Nigeria”

xxx In the UK, the proportion is two-thirds. Here, around 59pc of smartphones run on Android, while another 35pc are iPhones, according to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, both of which offer m-pay options. Mobile payments are going to be far more ubiquitous than their plastic counterparts, relegating contactless cards to being an offline backup in direContinue reading “Contactless cards are on borrowed time – they’re just an interim for phones”

Back in 2014, I wrote about how stupid the idea of making people very their age with credit cards for access to adult content. Forcing people to give their credit card details out willy-nilly will inevitably leading to an explosion in card fraud, From Porn is a serious issue, and so is identity | ConsultContinue reading “Porn is a serious issue, and so is identity | Consult Hyperion”

xxx The idea that permissioned blockchain startups are now up against substantial challenges can be seen in the shifting strategies at startups R3 and Digital Asset Holdings. Greenspan noted that both are working less on distributed ledgers, and more on “contract description languages”. From On Blockchain Disillusionment and Bitcoin’s Big Bad Wolves – CoinDesk xxx

xxx unlike Smart Contract platforms, agreements written using DAML do not need to be shared across multiple, often completely public, nodes in a network. Parties do not need to reveal the terms of their agreement to any undesirable third parties and it can be safely processed and authorized by only the relevant participants. All dataContinue reading “Introducing the Digital Asset Modeling Language – Digital Asset”

xxx Tencent would want to hope most WeChat users aren’t like Cai Jiami. The 31-year-old hastily transferred the balance in her WeChat “wallet” – roughly 7,000 yuan ($1070) – to her personal bank account before the Tencent-backed mobile messaging app could charge her for doing so. “It’s not a lot of money but I justContinue reading “Mobile enewsletter”

xxx A trial in the Bay Area involving 50 small businesses and 50  McDonald’s restaurants is allowing Google to hide payments in the background of retail transactions. It’s called Handsfree, it was announced at Google’s developer conference last month, and while this technology is admittedly in its “early days” as Spinnell puts it, it’s indicativeContinue reading “Money20/20 Europe: Android Pay Handsfree is Easier Than Tapping”