A library of snippets
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This essay is about Keith Baldwin, a 44-year-old surgeon who lives outside New Bedford, Mass. This essay is about how Dr. Baldwin lost more than 90% of the $177,000 that he had saved over the past decade. This essay is about the house that Dr. Baldwin was planning to buy with that money. And this essay is about Dr. Baldwin’s children, whose college funds he is now frantically saving money for because, in his words, “I don’t want to punish our kids for the mistake I made.”
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Many payments and identity experts will say that digital wallets are really about identity. Proving who you are and what you are entitled to do (tickets, access). Maybe even with fancy selective disclosure features.
They are also right. But that’s not the whole picture.
A pioneering group of others believe that digital wallets are really about the portability of any verifiable information, and digital authenticity.
And they too are right. We’re now getting much, much closer to what I’m talking about.
But there’s still more.
Once individuals can show up independently, with their own digital tools – digital wallets with verifiable, data, identity and digital assets – then we have something new, something special.
It’s a New. Customer. Channel.
Once a business asks for some data from a customer’s digital wallet, they have the opportunity to form a new digital connection with that customer.
From (1) Customer Futures Newsletter: Digital wallets are the new accounts:
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As my good friend Ron Shevlin reminds us here in Forbes, April is Financial Literacy Month in the US. As he also reminds us, whatever “financial literacy” might be, it seems to do little to improve the financial health of Americans. Same back home in the U.K. It’s time to give up on education and start investing in infrastructure.
From Financial Literacy Month: How To Improve Americans’ Financial Health:
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The roughly 4,000 AML-regulated entities within the scope of the levy will be organizations with U.K. revenue exceeding £10.2 million (about $10.6 million) per year, which will pay a fixed annual charge of either £10,000, £36,000 or £250,000 depending on the revenue bracket they fall in.
The levy will be collected by the three statutory AML supervisors — HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and the Gambling Commission — “with HMRC also taking on collection responsibilities for the entities supervised by the 22 Professional Body Supervisors (PBSs),” per the report.
According to the government, the levy also aims to raise a “desired” amount of £100 million ($124 million) per year to help fund advanced AML and economic crime capabilities.
From UK Adds Levy to Help Fund Money Laundering Fight | PYMNTS.com:
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WeChat, China’s leading social networking and payment app, has added the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), to its payment services, according to reports in local media. The move aims to help broaden the appeal of the digital yuan.
WeChat now supports the fast payment function of the digital yuan wallet, making it the second payment platform to do so after Alipay.
From WeChat integrates digital yuan into its payment platform.
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A new study from Juniper Research, foremost experts in the payments market, found the number of payment cards issued via digital platforms will reach 1.3 billion annually by 2027, from just 500 million in 2023. This growth of 170% reflects strong interest in improving the way users access and replace cards from issuers. This is in context of strong competition between issuers from digital-only banks and new fintechs offering card services.
Modern card issuing platforms, also known as digital card issuing platforms, allow card issuers to create cards using an API (Application Programming Interface)-driven approach; enabling cards to be delivered instantly to digital wallets, with the option for a physical card, boosting flexibility, transparency and speed significantly.
From News | Business Wire.
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Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
Tech chief says the development of chatbots is a more worthwhile use of processing power than crypto mining
Alex Hern
@alexhern
Sun 26 Mar 2023 16.21 BST
The US chip-maker Nvidia has said cryptocurrencies do not “bring anything useful for society” despite the company’s powerful processors selling in huge quantities to the sector.Michael Kagan, its chief technology officer, said other uses of processing power such as the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT were more worthwhile than mining crypto.
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General Motors is planning to drop support for both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto from new electric vehicles it plans to launch in the next few years. The decision won’t affect any GM vehicles already on the market, nor will it apply to gasoline- or diesel-powered GM vehicles in the coming years—just EVs.
GM wants to offer customers a more integrated solution that sees Google Maps, Google Assistant, Audible, Spotify, and other applications run natively on its Ultifi software platform.
I must admit, I’m rather taken aback by this decision. For starters, Apple CarPlay is wildly popular; Apple says 79 percent of new car buyers insist on this feature. While independent surveys don’t find quite this level of demand, a 2020 survey showed 48 percent of car buyers want CarPlay or Android Auto in their next vehicle.
From GM confirms it’s dropping Apple CarPlay and Android Auto from 2024 EVs | Ars Technica:
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Ofcom will neither prescribe mitigations implemented by telcos in the way the US has, nor will they stipulate that calls must be blocked if they have not been authenticated, as is required by French law.
From UK Adopts New Rules to Stop CLI Spoofing but Not STIR/SHAKEN | Commsrisk:
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Privacy or good data practices are not something we can expect the market to produce, they also aren’t something that consumers can easily opt in or out of. Theorizing data’s competitive value in terms of a quality dimension equivalent to price is misleading. It misses the importance of structuring digital platform markets so that competition can reduce data and privacy concerns.
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