Snippings

xxx

all of the pilots and trials that have been done to date are largely worthless because we don’t really know what we want the digital currency to do.

From: MPE 2024: What will be the impact of a digital euro?.

xxx

xxx

It’s an obvious point, but credit cards in America generate a lot of cash for banks. In 2022, I wrote up how the business works, with the observation that there’s something on the order of a quarter trillion dollars a year in revenue. This revenue comes from fees for connecting merchants and banks, as well as fees charged to consumers for access to credit.

Every credit card network is also a data sieve, connected to advertising data brokers, anti-fraud features, and analytics firms. In addition, being able to reject someone from the payments system is a core sovereign power, and the stated reason the right is so afraid of a central bank digital currency.

From: The Fed Is Behind the Capital One/Discover Merger.

xxx

Here are a couple of stories taken from a local news site in the last few days with details omitted to protect the privacy of the individuals involved. The first concerns a women who went to a local bank branch (astonishingly, we still have one) to draw out cash to “pay bills”. She was given the cash in an envelope which was snatched from her hand by a boy in a hoodie as she left the branch, never to be seen again. The second concerns a women from the same area who withdrew £2,000 in cash to “pay builders” and put it in her shopping bag but found the cash was missing from her bag when she got home.

Now, setting to one side why they were paying bills in cash (just to be clear, the last time I engaged builders to do some work, I paid them by bank transfer and it worked fine) I think these stories provide an interesting perspective on the “access to cash” argument. Is it responsible to spend money on increasing access to cash when people are trapped in the cash economy are the people who are most vulnerable? Surely it would be better to find ways.

xxx

She had no idea she was being hit with a $7.80 surcharge – 10 per cent of the bill – until she checked the invoice emailed to her.

From: Cashless risk exposed as Aussie mum slugged with ‘ridiculous’ surcharge to pay with card.

xxx

analysis by Canstar found Australians were paying an average of $140 a year in surcharges for opting to use electronic payments over cash.

 

That adds up to $4 billion – a $400 million increase on the year before.

xxx

Musk’s program is revealed as profoundly conservative. He’s about as far from being an original or innovative thinker as it’s possible to get. He’s fighting the intellectual battles of the last century, a 1900s hero dropped into the 2000s with an unlimited budget to reshape the future to fit the era he’s from.

From: The Science Fiction of the 1900s – by Karl Schroeder.

xxx

xxx

It’s been two years since President Biden first announced his intention to take executive action to “prevent and detect identity theft involving public benefits, while protecting privacy and civil liberties and preventing bias that results in disparate outcomes.”

From: Slowing fraud requires executive order on digital theft – Nextgov/FCW.

xxx

Brad Goodall, the founder of payments startup Banked (which has a new partnership with FIS aimed at driving pay-by-bank offerings for consumers and businesses in the US) highlights the potential for retailers to incentivise customers with cash back or loyalty points, offering customer intimacy with inducements coming from margin that would have otherwise have gone card fees.

xxx

More healthcare groups are charging fees to answer patients’ electronic messages, often the ones you exchange via their portal. The typical cost of an email message claim was $39 in 2021, including both the portion paid by insurance and by the patient, according to a Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker analysis.

From: Emailing Your Doctor Might Cost You – WSJ.

xxx

xxx

Salla, a Saudi Arabian software startup that provides software for e-commerce firms to build websites and handle online payments, raised $130 million from investors including the alternative asset manager Investcorp. 

From: Investcorp, Sanabil Back Salla’s $130 Million Pre-IPO Fundraise – Bloomberg.

xxx

xxx

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is considering revisions to Recommendation 16 (R.16), its Interpretive Note (INR.16) and the related Glossary of specific terms, to adapt them to the changes in payment business models and messaging standards.

From: Public Consultation on Recommendation 16 on Payment Transparency.

xxx