Snippings

xxx

Digital ID Connect is a joint venture between Yoti, the Post Office and Lloyds Bank and is the leading app for those seeking to prove their identity and age, particularly in bars and restaurants.
It has inked a deal with London-based CreditLadder, which to date has reported some £1 billion in rent payments.

From: UK’s largest rent reporting platform reveals big distribution deal.

xxx

When Apple announced it’s Vison Pro headset, may people commented on the the $3,499 launch price (comparing it to the cost of Meta’s Occulus headset) but I felt that is was not really that expensive in historical context and predicted that there would be plenty of people who will buy one to begin experimenting with it. Me, for example. Well, based on early order trends for the headset they seem to be flying off virtual shelves.

xxx

Apple’s Vision Pro will probably sell fewer than 200,000 units, because of supply constraints on components, as well as the price tag. It “will be a hit with developers in 2024 and then consumers in 2025”, predicts Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities, an investment company.
The thing to watch in 2024 is what those developers find to do with the device. Smartphones took off only after the launch of apps that turned internet-connected phones from novelties into vital everyday tools. Headsets, used mostly for gaming, still lack compelling use cases for most people. But as programmers begin to play around with the Vision Pro, that could change. In the months ahead, tech-watchers will have their eyes on Apple’s new gadget—and it will have its four internal cameras looking right back at them.

From: The fight to control the headset market will intensify.

xxx

xxx

When Tim Cook introduced Apple’s Vision Pro, he turned mixed reality into a category, not just a theory. Apple’s glossy marketing showed a new vision for the technology — one that prioritized mixed reality over virtual reality — and lifted Meta’s efforts.

From: Tim Cook’s Apple Has Been Meta’s Best Friend. Completely By Accident..

xxx

xxx

Apple will start shipping its first mixed-reality headset, the Vision Pro, this year. Its killer feature is the highest-resolution display ever made for such a device. Will there be a killer app? It’s early, but the world’s most valuable company has made a bold bet that the answer is yes.

From: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2024 | MIT Technology Review.

xxx

xxx

The ECB is planning two digital euros for retail payments, with one of them exclusively for offline use with holdings too held offline.

From: ECB Shows It’s Serious About Enabling Offline Use of Euro CBDC.

That sounds suboptimal to me, so let’s unpick what “offline” electronic cash really means.

 

I’m on a plane watching a random TV show that I never heard of before, it’s called Poker Face. It’s a crime show, loner who travels the Earth bringing justice, there’s a callback to Kung Fu via Pulp Fiction in episode 1. Anyway, the schtick is that there’s a woman with an ability to detect lies so she’s good at playing poker, I won’t give anything anyway except to say it has nice writing and some really good acting in it. But in episode 2 there’s a lovely character, a woman trucker who lives off grid and insist on working for cash only, won’t use cards and doesn’t trust Bitcoin. And there’s a scene where an auto-repair guy is inspecting $100 bills.

Anyway, I mention the show because it made me think, as I often do, about the relationship between money and privacy. The woman who wants privacy . 

xxx

Tim Cook handed Meta a gift by insisting that Apple’s Messages synced poorly with Android.

From: WhatsApp is Finally Starting to Dominate in the United States. Here’s Why..

I have to say this is true in our family of mixed Apple and Android users: we now have a family WhatsApp group (as it seems everyone does) and we use it all the time.

This makes me wonder, of course, about the implications for financial services. Let me begin by telling a true story.

xxx

Could digital wallets be the West’s answer to the super-app? Evolving beyond their traditional role, digital wallets now offer a range of services, including digital identity management, and much more, as David Birch points out in this article

“The transition from physical wallets to digital wallets is underway for sure. But if you think that those wallets are about payments, I think you are missing the big picture.”
Additionally as highlighted by Brett King as a quote in the recent Samlink – A Kyndryl Company report – The Samlink Equation 2024, many have started to have a preference for digital wallets over their traditional banking apps when it comes to managing daily financial matters. Open banking and embedded finance further enhances this trend, allowing digital wallets to offer a consolidated view of a user’s financial life.

From: (6) My Super-App is bigger than your Super-App! | LinkedIn.

xxx

xxx

The state’s new law will force merchants to limit credit card surcharges and more clearly disclose them to consumers. If the businesses don’t, they could face a $500 penalty.

From: New York enacts surcharge law | Payments Dive.

 

xxx

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul last month signed a law prohibiting merchants from imposing credit card surcharges that are more than what they are charged by the “credit card company” for such transactions.

From: New York enacts surcharge law | Payments Dive.

xxx

It’s not clear to me what “the credit card card company” means here: I assume they mean, for example, Square or whoever it is that provides the actual service to the merchant rather than the credit card issuer, processor, network etc.

xxx

Having just spent a few days in New York, I was curious to observe the new ordnance in action. I went a couple of times to 

xxx

A Pittsburgh couple’s dog got himself into some big trouble after wolfing down the most expensive dinner of his life.

The dog’s name is Cecil. His owners said he is a well-behaved dog, and he never did anything bad until he chowed down on dozens of $50 and $100 bills.

Clayton Law put an envelope with a wad of cash on his kitchen counter in early December. He and his wife, Carrie, needed the cash to pay for a project at their home in Pittsburgh’s Point Breeze neighborhood.

From: Pittsburgh family dog eats $4,000 in cash – CBS Pittsburgh.

I am surprised that their contractor was unable to accept Zelle, Venmo, CashApp, FedNow, Visa Direct

xxx

The campaign, launched by the right-leaning news outlet in June 2023, focused around a petition calling for the UK government to protect the status of cash as a form of legal tender and payment until at least 2050.

From: GB News cautioned by Ofcom over ‘Don’t Kill Cash’ campaign.

There is no problem at all about protecting the legal tender status of cash until 2050, but it’s important to remember that legal tender doesn’t mean what people think it means. 

As many people (including, I have to say, me) thought the shiny new bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETF) are not bringing in new money from retail investors but providing a haven for speculators getting out of other products. In a J.P. Morgan report on this topic, their analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote “We are skeptical of the optimism shared by many market participants at the moment that a lot of fresh capital will enter the crypto space as a result of the spot bitcoin ETF approval”. Similarly, 

 

xxx

Newly launched bitcoin exchange-traded funds enable the cryptocurrency to be bought as easily as stocks, but a top Goldman Sachs executive said digital currencies are still more like roulette than anything that should be in your retirement account.
“If you want to go to Las Vegas, great,” said Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, who leads the investment strategy group at Goldman Sachs Private Wealth Management.
“People can use it if they want for total speculation, but it is not an investment and people should not be investing in cryptocurrencies, in bitcoin, in the ETF, as part of an investment portfolio.”
Mossavar-Rahmani, who helps advise the firm’s wealthy clients, said the problem with cryptocurrency is that there’s no real value to it—except for criminals. She compared crypto unfavorably to artificial intelligence, source of a separate speculative frenzy.

From: Goldman Investing Chief: ETFs Don’t Make Bitcoin an Investment.

xxx

xxx

Private cryptocurrencies have failed the basic test of digital money and are likely to be in decline in the near future

This is the view of Ravi Menon, retiring head of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) who belives he is not the only one on the way out.

Despite the savage criticism of private crypto, Menon was more positive about the potential of stablecoins and tokenisation.

The regulator has recently granted in-house approval to three firms issuing stablecoins – StraitsX SGD Issuance, StraitsX USD Issuance and Paxos Digital Singapore.

From MAS chief rubbishes private crypto in speech.

xxx

Well, indeed.