Snippings

I was at dinner with a friend when I got a text message from my bank in the UK confirming that I had changed my address (I hadn’t) and that I had ordered a replacement credit card (I hadn’t). Oh well, another day, another fraud. I thought I should do something immediately, but then I remembered that it was the bank’s money at risk, not mine, so I went back to finish the meal.

Later that evening, back at my hotel, I went on to my bank app and found the “contact us” button which gave me two choices: call (which I tried and got “call failed”, but anyway I was in Australia and it was 2am UK time and the “help” desk doesn’t open until 7am) or chat (which I tried, and after going through some menus about whether I wanted marine insurance or something I got a message saying the chat function is down but they were working on it). Oh well.

At night I called again, around 10am UK time, and got through to chap who told me that a replacement card had indeed been sent to Croydon. So I blocked the card and reset the correct address. No harm done.

But then I began to wonder. This is a “back up” credit card that I keep in my desk at home in case of some circumstances in which my other cards have been stolen or Amex has gone down or agents of a foreign power have blocked my Visa card, or whatever. As far as I can recall (I can’t log in to the credit card app because I forgot the password and can’t be bothered to reset it) I used it once when it arrived, just to check it was working, and have never used it since.

How did the criminals get that card number and how were they able to convince my bank to change the addeesss?

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Toddler Moning, head of applied foresights, US Bank, provided some insights by explaining the ‘dirty little secret’ of foresights.

“The dirty little secret is, of course, no one can predict the future, right? But what you can do is you can look at the past and then signals and drivers and trends that are showing up in the present, so that you can consider the many possible little futures in different industry sectors and different areas of people’s lives. From that you can create little scenarios [and] little prototypes of ‘well if this continues, what might that mean?’”

From: US Bank on the ‘dirty little secret’ of applied foresight and ‘future safaris’.

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Coinbase’s AgentKit complements Agentic Frameworks, like OpenAI’s Agents SDK by empowering your AI agents with onchain wallets—unlocking secure, internet-native financial capabilities.

From: Coinbase enables agentic commerce for OpenAI’s Agents SDK with launch day support | Coinbase.

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The ECB said late on Thursday it had fixed the roughly seven-hour outage in its payment system, which had left transactions likely worth trillions of euros from firms, consumers and investors up in the air.

The malfunction of the so-called Target 2 system (T2), used to settle more than 3 trillion euros ($3.12 trillion) of daily payments and financial trades, meant transactions between banks could not go through.

From: ECB’s multi-trillion payments breakdown sends shudders through Europe | Reuters.

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The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is calling for the rapid adoption of digital identity technologies to enhance aviation security and operational efficiency.

Leading government and industry stakeholders in aviation security participating in the Sydney Leaders Week Conference supported this position, emphasizing the need for collaboration in implementing Verifiable Credentials (VC) and Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs).

From: IATA – Aviation Security Leaders Call for Digital Identity.

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As part of this effort, IATA’s One ID initiative promotes globally interoperable digital identity standards, enabling passengers to verify their travel documents before departure and move through the airport using biometric recognition instead of physical documents. One ID works in harmony with ICAO’s Digital Travel Credential ensuring security and efficiency while maintaining privacy and compliance with global regulations.

From: IATA – Aviation Security Leaders Call for Digital Identity.

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Aviation security leaders at the conference also identified key actions for governments to drive the industry’s digital transformation:

Fast-Track Technology Integration: Incorporate VC and DID technologies into national and international security frameworks, aligning with ICAO Annex 17 and Aircraft Operator Security Programs (AOSP).

From: IATA – Aviation Security Leaders Call for Digital Identity.

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The International Air Transport Association (IATA), along with aviation security leaders, has called for the rapid adoption of digital identity technologies with a release on March 20. The trade association believes the move will enhance aviation security and operational efficiency.

From: IATA Urges Rapid Adoption Of Digital Identity Technologies.

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DPI is a complement to sector digitalization, not a replacement. Core sector digital systems and standards—such as digital registries for social protection, business, credit, and agriculture; health-sector interoperability and data exchange protocols; digital tax or human resource management information systems —are essential investments to be managed in the respective sector.

From: (Part 2 of 2): DPI: Transforming Lives, Not Just Payments.

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You are almost certainly familiar with the concept of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and the link between an effective DPI and the wider economy. The World Bank identifies DPI’s core functions as digital identity, digital payments and data sharing. These essential features support more efficient public and private-sector applications to improve outcomes for citizens (across health, social welfare, financial services, business and beyond). Well, AIs will need DPI too. So what will it look like?

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) say that DPI has the potential to support the transformation of the economy and support inclusive growth. They highlight the particular example of India’s foundational DPI, the so-called “India Stack” , and show how it has been harnessed to foster innovation and competition, boost financial inclusion and improve government revenue collection. India’s DPI contains powerful lessons for other countries embarking on digital transformation, in particular a design approach that focuses on shared building blocks and supporting innovation across the ecosystem through APIs.

The future economy, however, is about Agents as much as it is about Businesses and Consumers (the ABCs, if you like) and these will need a DPI that satisifies their needs.

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The next frontier of AI includes autonomous agent systems, where LLMs not only respond to queries but proactively direct their own processes, orchestrate multiple tools, and execute complex tasks with minimal intervention.
This will mean for the first time, agents will be invited into the payment system and will transact and negotiate dynamically on behalf of individuals, businesses, and even with other AI agents — creating a radically different commercial landscape.

From: A-Commerce Evolution: Agentic Commerce as The New Frontier | by The Acrew Team | Mar, 2025 | Acrew Capital.

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Yet, despite significant investments in AI initiatives, many enterprises struggle to scale AI use beyond isolated pilot projects. A recent BCG study found that 74% of companies are currently struggling to scale AI adoption and achieve value. The root cause of this delivery challenge frequently lies not in the AI models themselves, but in the underlying data management approach and infrastructure that supports them. In practice, organizations face a complex collection of data-related obstacles that combine to impede AI adoption at scale.

From: Digital Economy Dispatch #225 — Is a Data Fabric Approach the Key to Scaling Enterprise AI?.

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