Snippings

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In fact, the past two years have been the best for banking since before the Great Recession. Globally, banks generated $7 trillion in revenue (Exhibit 1) and $1.1 trillion in net income, with return on tangible equity (ROTE) reaching 11.7 percent. Banks have returned to healthy levels of capital (12.8 percent common equity tier one capital divided by risk-weighted assets) and liquidity (77.2 percent), which both improved over 2022. In fact, banking generated more total profit than any other sector around the world.

From: McKinsey’s Global Banking Annual Review 2024 | McKinsey.

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Fraudsters posing as legitimate wholesalers received the 950 clothbound cheeses from the Southwark-based company before it was realised they were a fake firm.

From: More than 22 tonnes of cheddar stolen from Neal’s Yard Dairy.

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A May 2024 study by the American Land Title Association and economic research firm NDP Analytics with 783 responses found seller impersonation fraud — when someone fakes the identities of property owners with the aim to sell their properties — is fairly common. Twenty-eight percent of title insurance companies experienced at least one seller impersonation fraud attempt in 2023; 19% saw attempts in April 2024 alone.

From: AI Is Making It Easier for Scammers to Steal Homes From Their Owners – Business Insider.

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The new regulation enforces penalties on those who continue to pay rent in cash. All rent payments are now required to be processed through banks or Türkiye’s Post and Telegraph Agency (PTT).

From: Cash rent payments come to end across Türkiye – Türkiye Today.

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Stirling generally works in his store’s express checkout lane, where customers buy 12 items or fewer. “Speed is really essential to make sure the line doesn’t build up beyond two or three people,” he says. And customers who meticulously count out change can slow down the process significantly. The supermarket worker prefers shoppers who use contactless credit or debit cards, simply tapping and going without much fuss.
A study by the National Association of Convenience Stores, an American trade body, estimates that counting out pennies can add up to 2.5 seconds to every cash transaction. That isn’t a significant amount in and of itself, but multiplied millions of times a day, it can have an impact on productivity.

From: The problem with abolishing coins.

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The gold-backed ZiG, which stands for Zimbabwe Gold, is the country’s sixth attempt at a stable currency in 15 years. It was introduced in April at a rate of 13.6 ZiG per US dollar and has since lost almost 80% of its value on the black market.

From: Zimbabwe’s new currency faces headwinds five months on.

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It is amazing how quickly our expectations change. I recently had to fly to San Francisco, and as I had been busy chasing around events in London, I’d set aside a whole bunch of emails and other tasks to work on while in the air. I’m not sure whether it’s a badge of honour for a life spent in the service of exports for UK plc or the tragic hallmark of a wasted life, but I like working on planes. I put on my excellent noise-cancelling cans, choose music to fit the tasks at hand, open up the laptop and work in peace, focused and productive. I get lot done flying, which is handy, because I fly a lot.

So imagine how upset I was when after take off the captain annoucement that there would be no wifi on the flight because of a technical fault. Disaster. There’s no offline mode for LinkedIn.

Under the headline “Enough already’: Analysts question banks’ $650 billion tech spend”, American Banker reported on McKinsey’s observation that the technology spending at banks is somewhere around the GDP of Sweden yet does not appear to bring revenue growth. Well, duh, as they say: do the math.

Roughly 90% of bank technology spending goes on keeping the lights on, so only 10% is available to build or rebuild products and services. Of that 10% of the budget that is available for discretionary spending, 90% goes on compliance and flood defenses against a tidal wave of regulatory changes. So of that $650 billion, only $6.5 billion is really available for projects to increase revenue. The result: my bank still has a worse app than Revolut and no multi-currency account like Wise. I just tried to install my bank app on my new phone and it failed with a mysterious error message which, when I searched for it in their “help” section, meant that I had to call them. On the phone. Party like it’s 1999.

The things the bank could spend money on to generate new revenues (eg, digital identity services) seem to be stuck.

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According to the PYMNTS Intelligence report, in the U.S., the result has been strong Apple Pay growth as a percentage of retail sales volume. Between 2014 and 2021, Apple Pay growth sort of flatlined. Between 2022 and 2024, Apple Pay grew rapidly. Its growth over those two years was 41%.

At the ten-year mark, Apple Pay has a 5.6% share of retail sales. Increased merchant acceptance drove 58% of that lift. In other words, Apple Pay users could — and did — use it to pay for their purchases at more stores. Most of those purchases came from gas and C-stores, grocery stores and restaurants.

From: Apple Pay’s 10-Year Journey and Its Next Decade of Decisions.

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More than 90% of iPhone users who could tap their phone instead of a card when shopping in a store still don’t. Less than 20% of Apple Pay’s growth over the last decade has come from new users. We also see that instore use and adoption has started to plateau.

From: Apple Pay’s 10-Year Journey and Its Next Decade of Decisions.

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Stripe announced on Monday that it had agreed to acquire Bridge, a two-and-a-half-year-old San Francisco–based startup focused on payments using stablecoins, a type of crypto pegged to a traditional currency. With estimated annual revenue of around $12 million, based on its transaction volume and people with knowledge of its fee structure, Bridge is fetching an eye-popping multiple of around 90 times revenue.

From: How Stripe’s $1.1 Billion Crypto Bet Could Pay Off — The Information.

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