Snippings

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Nearly nine in 10 European consumers using a contactless payment ring say that it is their preferred method for making contactless payments (89%) compared with smartphone payments (49%) and payment cards (44%), according to a Mastercard survey.

The survey comes as Mastercard partners with Intesa Sanpaolo bank to roll out a contactless NFC payments ring in Italy, enabling users to connect the device to their bank-issued Mastercard payment card and use it to make contactless payments at the point of sale.

“Payment rings represent a further step towards the spread of the internet of things,” Mastercard says. It adds that the key drivers for consumer adoption are “the desire to make payments quickly (82%), to be at the forefront (69%) and to be fashionable (31%)”, with nearly one in three older users also citing safety reasons (32%).

From: Nine in 10 payment ring users say it’s their favourite way to pay • NFCW.

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A complete collapse of trust in the content we see and hear, because we can’t tell where (or how) it was made? Or by whom?

Also yes.

From: Digital Wallets For Online Porn Age Checks, Personalised AI Assistants Will Get Wild And Weird, and Automated Job Applications Will Become An HR Headache.

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Manuel Klein, Product Manager Blockchain Solutions and Digital Currencies from Deutsche Bank

The investigation phase has revealed that a potential retail CBDC will be based on a centralised infrastructure, hosted by the ECB, therefore Blockchain technology will most likely not be used. The Eurosystem has, however, experimented with an innovative token-based backend infrastructure which could allow digital Euros to be token-based and hence similar to physical cash which is also not account-based. The ECB has stated that transactions must be free for end-users. It will, however, be possible for intermediaries who process transactions to generate revenue. This will be achieved through merchant fees for the acquirer and interchange fees for the issuing bank.

Once a retail CBDC transaction is settled, the money will be credited, up to the maximum holding amount set by the ECB, to a recipient’s wallet. To prevent large liquidity outflows from the banking system, merchant wallets will always have a zero intraday and overnight holding capacity. Enterprises that accept digital euro transactions, will therefore immediately and automatically, have these funds ‘defunded’ to their regular bank accounts at a commercial bank. “The digital euro cannot be held and used as a form of payment for corporates and merchants,” Klein emphasised.

From: CBDCs in Europe: retail and wholesale projects to follow – Deutsche Bank.

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The investigation phase has revealed that a potential retail CBDC will be based on a centralised infrastructure, hosted by the ECB, therefore Blockchain technology will most likely not be used.

From: CBDCs in Europe: retail and wholesale projects to follow – Deutsche Bank.

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The investigation phase has revealed that a potential retail CBDC will be based on a centralised infrastructure, hosted by the ECB, therefore Blockchain technology will most likely not be used.

From: CBDCs in Europe: retail and wholesale projects to follow – Deutsche Bank.

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A woman in China was shocked to receive a 430,000-yuan (US$60,000) bill at a restaurant after accidentally posting the QR code for ordering food online, which others used to place food orders.

The woman, surnamed Wang, said she only wanted to post photos of the dishes from a hotpot restaurant she visited with her friend on November 23, but she accidentally included a QR code that was stuck to the table for ordering and paying for meals.

From Food faux pas: China diner shocked by US$60,000 bill for meal after accidentally posting photo of dish ordering QR code online | South China Morning Post.

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Jose Alejandro Zamora Yrala, 35, is the founder of AOG Technics, a London-based company which allegedly supplied parts with forged safety paperwork that have ended up in at least 126 commercial aircraft engines around the world.

He was arrested at his home in London on Wednesday by officers from the UK’s Serious Fraud Office, which has opened a criminal probe into the scandal.

From Founder of company which ‘supplied jet engine parts with falsified safety paperwork’ is arrested by fraud cops in Britain over scandal which forced airlines in US and around the globe to ground at least 126 passenger planes | Daily Mail Online.

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Nearly nine in 10 European consumers using a contactless payment ring say that it is their preferred method for making contactless payments (89%) compared with smartphone payments (49%) and payment cards (44%), according to a Mastercard survey.

From: Nine in 10 payment ring users say it’s their favourite way to pay • NFCW.

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[Garner] described the push by big tech companies into the sector as a potential “inflection point” that made the need for a national payments strategy even more urgent.

The use of digital wallets, including Google Pay and Apple Pay, has grown rapidly, accounting for 10 per cent of UK retail payments. Open banking technology, which Apple is experimenting with, would allow digital wallets to display account balances and risk making some customer interactions with their bank “obsolete”, the report said.

From UK payment sector urged to develop system to bypass dominant card networks.

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The UK should develop ways to challenge the dominance of the big card networks and is “at risk of falling behind” other countries unless it builds an alternative to its “clunky” Faster Payment Service, according to a government-commissioned review into the competitiveness of the sector.

The report, led by former Nationwide chief executive Joe Garner, called on the payment sector to use open banking technology to create new routes between customers’ bank accounts and retailers that would bypass card intermediaries to challenge the dominance of the Visa and Mastercard networks.

From UK payment sector urged to develop system to bypass dominant card networks.

The rather obvious new route between customers and retailers that bypasses intermediaries is the internet. And the money that we need to send over the internet is stable coins. In this instance, Sterling stablecoins. And if we need Sterling stablecoins (and I think we do) then why not just short-circuit the process of creating competing stablecoin issuers and just get on with it and plan for a Bank of England Digital Pound. The most Sterling Stablecoin of all, a central bank digital currency.