Snippings

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US banks made a $1tn windfall from the Federal Reserve’s two-and-a-half-year era of high interest rates, an analysis of official data by the Financial Times has found.

From: Fed’s high-rates era handed $1tn windfall to US banks.

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Software engineering is by far the biggest beneficiary of the most advanced AI, which appears to have reduced demand for junior engineers, at least for now, according to job listing site Indeed.

From: Behind Microsoft Layoffs, Automation Efforts Boom — The Information.

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Fashion retailer Mango became one of the first to feature AI-generated glam bots in its adverts back in July — just days before the company reported its highest revenues in four decades. Mango is among the growing number of companies creating a new normal in advertising, in an industry that is worth $2.5 trillion. Bloomberg named Nike, Louis Vuitton and Levi Strauss & Co. as some of the clothing brands now embracing the idea.

From: Fashion models step aside as AI glam bots join them in ads: ‘It’s about faster content creation’.

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Vogue Singapore’s March 2023 issue featured an AI-generated model on its cover. “Marking the first issue under Vogue Singapore’s new editor-in-chief, Desmond Lim, the March 2023 cover is an homage to innovation, tradition and diversity”, the cover story stated.

From: With AI taking over, where does that leave the supermodel phenomenon? | Vogue India.

AI-generated models are receiving what Vogue calls a “cordial” reception, given their cost-effectiveness, time reduction, and democratization of creative resources (and presumably don’t show up late or have drug problems and so on).

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Richard Crone points out that adding what Walmart has already said it will do online to the Walmart Pay digital wallet would have a similar impact. Putting the pay-by-bank capability inside a “container,” in this case the store’s own mobile wallet, would introduce some anti-fraud measures, such as user authentication via password, biometrics, geographic monitoring and access to Fiserv’s file entries related to the underlying account.

From: Walmart Revs Instant Pay By Bank to Cut Out Mastercard and Visa.

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People are increasingly using AI apps such as ChatGPT in lieu of traditional search engines such as Google. To handle topical queries that require web access, OpenAI relies on Bing, whose owner is OpenAI’s biggest outside shareholder

From: Meta Develops AI Search Engine to Lessen Reliance on Google, Microsoft — The Information.

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New data from FIDO Alliance shows passkey awareness has risen from 39% familiarity in 2022, to 57% in 2024.

Moreover, businesses are missing out on revenue from younger generations, with 50% of people aged 25-34 abandoning at least one purchase per month because they had forgotten their password.

From: Youth of today say passwords are old news, passkeys are the future | TechRadar.

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Data aggregators, such as Plaid and Akoya, which provide connections among banks and financial tech services, and the Financial Technology Association, whose members include aggregators and payments companies like PayPal (PYPL.O), opens new tab, praised the rule, saying it would promote the secure transfer of consumer data.
But other trade groups said they were not happy.
Lindsey Johnson, head of the Consumer Bankers Association, said in a statement the CFPB had “contorted” the co

From: ‘Open banking’ rules for consumer data unveiled by US watchdog | Reuters.

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Payments using mobile wallets such as Apple Pay and Google pay reached 39 per cent of card transactions in the June quarter 2024, the annual report of the Payments System Board shows.

Nearly half of all card transactions are soon expected to be made via a mobile device in Australia

From: Wallet share hits 40%.

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Similarly, in Simon Taylor’s interesting discussion about the use of AI agent in financial services he says that there are a few layers to regulation and the first one that he sets out is identity because strong credentials (which I took to mean credentials that are strongly authenticated at point of presentation) are the crucial link between the agent and the entity it represents. 

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Fashion retailer Mango became one of the first to feature AI-generated glam bots in its adverts back in July — just days before the company reported its highest revenues in four decades.

From: Fashion models step aside as AI glam bots join them in ads: ‘It’s about faster content creation’.

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Deutsche Bank subsidiary Postbank is preparing to roll out a service that enables consumers to generate a barcode on their phone to withdraw or deposit around €1,000 per day at 12,500 retail locations in Germany

From: Postbank generates cash via barcode.

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