Snippings

In 2004, the former Prime Minister of our United Kingdom, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel  Johnson wrote in a newspaper here if he were ever asked to produce an ID card as evidence that “I am who I say I am” in “any other venue, public or private” then he would “take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded I produce it”. This was before his government introduced (pointless and expensive) mandatory voter ID requriements at polling stations. Which is why I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when he was turned away from his local polling station after forgetting to bring acceptable photo ID.

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Open banking allows digital wallets to leverage bank payments without requiring partnerships with individual banks; boosting access significantly. The report forecasts the ability to quickly and securely access bank accounts through open banking, alongside bank-backed A2A wallets, will increase consumer instant payment transaction volume from 252 billion in 2024, to over 600 billion by 2028.

From: Open Banking and A2A Payment Transactions to Reach 600 Billion by 2028 Reveals Juniper Research | The Fintech Times.

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Most Robinhood Gold Cards are made of stainless steel and weigh 17 grams, making this card one of the heftiest metal credit cards on the market. Top-tier Gold members can even request theirs in real 10-karat gold. Interested applicants must refer 10 or more subscribers to the Robinhood Gold membership to be eligible for the 36-gram precious-metal credit card.

From: Robinhood Launched a New Credit Card, and Some Are Made of Real Gold.

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My American Express Platinum card weighs 17g, so it is clearly not made out of platinum (otherwise it would cost about $500 or something). But 36g of 18 carat gold costs a couple of thousand dollars! Either way, making the cards out of expensive metal for me is a waste of money, since the cards sit in a drawer at home while I use my phone or ring to pay for things. In fact when I went looking for my Platinum card in order to weigh it, I’d forgorten where it was and it took me a while find it (I realised I’d moved it to my travel wallet a couple of weeks ago).

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The key factor for success when working with gen AI lies in training employees in essential soft skills such as critical thinking, judgment, empathy, and bias detection to effectively task models and evaluate their results. It’s important to recognize that gen AI operates based on the most likely arrangement of words or pixels derived from its training data and prompts. It doesn’t possess intrinsic understanding or intent. As AI assumes more responsibilities, the human-in-the-loop becomes a mission-critical step, focused on diminishing the window of time needed for human interaction to still ensure reliable, fair, and useful outcomes.

From: Five Myths About Generative AI That Leaders Should Know – Knowledge at Wharton.

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But stamps aren’t yet entirely anachronistic. Yes, the volume of first-class mail has been on the decline, but the U.S. Postal Service still sells about 12.5 billion stamps annually. Some of this is a matter of taste. “There are certain things where physical mail is still seen as the socially correct way to do things,” says Daniel Piazza, the chief curator of philately at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, pointing to mailing wedding invitations, birthday notes, and holiday cards.

From: Why We Still Use Postage Stamps – The Atlantic.

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Botshit can be produced at a scale and velocity that beggars the imagination. Consider that Amazon has had to cap the number of self-published “books” an author can submit to a mere three books per day

From: Pluralistic: The Coprophagic AI crisis (14 Mar 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow.

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According to Christopher Stanley, the Head of Payments at X, the platform’s payment capabilities will extend far beyond simple tipping. Users can soon store money in their X Wallet, send funds to other X Payments users, and even earn interest on their account holdings.

“Think Venmo at first,” Stanley explained, “Then, as things evolve, you can gain interest, buy products, eventually use it to buy things in stores (think Apple Pay).”

As Stanley puts it, the ultimate goal is to create a self-contained financial ecosystem within the X platform. “The end goal is if you ever have any incentive to take money out of our system, then we have failed, you shouldn’t ever need to take money out because you should be able to do anything you need on our platform,” he stated.

From: Elon Musk Aims to Transform X into Your Bank Account Alternative.

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The European Union is poised to approve proposed policy changes next month from Apple that would enable third-party firms to access the tech giant’s devices’ antenna for tap-and-pay transactions using Near Field Communication, Reuters reports. The move means that third-party apps could be the default digital wallet app for tapping to pay in the EU with an iPhone, expanding users’ checkout options from Apple Pay, which currently is the devices’ only contactless payment option.

From: Mastercard using open banking to spot fraud, EU warms to Apple Pay policy | PaymentsSource | American Banker.

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Last year, the ECB published its “stocktake”, the findings of the work the Eurosystem carried out during the digital euro investigation phase, which lasted from October 2021 until October 2023. In this, they talk about how a digital euro would be usable online and offline. In their words, the “offline” mode would designed to maximise certain cash-like characteristics: that is, a bearer payment instrument “that is not dependent on an online connection, but is limited to proximity payments”.

But why should edge transactions be limited to proximity payments? It seems to me that if the system has the capability to implement device-to-device transfers (ie, edge transactions) then transactions should always be device-to-device whether the devices are local or remote.

From: The ECB Warn That The IPhone Is “Incompatible With Digital Currency”.

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the FDIC may have experienced mission-creep, taking it upon itself to rescue uninsured depositors whenever possible

From: Why Have Uninsured Depositors Become De Facto Insured? by Michael Ohlrogge :: SSRN.

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For “unisured depositors” read “voters”.