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Interchange – and particularly debit interchange – itself was never meant to support multiple large businesses. Similarly, acquiring is not nearly as lucrative as many think, and especially not with an increasingly crowded fee pool.

From Interchange is a burning platform – by Matt Brown:

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“Our digital payments ecosystem has been developed as a free public good,” Mr. Modi said on Friday to finance ministers from the Group of 20, which India is hosting this year. “This has radically transformed governance, financial inclusion and ease of living in India.”

From India Embraces Digital Payments Over Cash, Even for a 10-Cent Chai – The New York Times.

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In January, about eight billion transactions worth nearly $200 billion were carried out on the U.P.I., according to Dilip Asbe, the managing director of the National Payments Corporation of India, which oversees the platform.

From India Embraces Digital Payments Over Cash, Even for a 10-Cent Chai – The New York Times.

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The system has grown rapidly and is now used by close to 300 million individuals and 50 million merchants, Mr. Asbe said. Digital payments are being made for even the smallest of transactions, with nearly 50 percent classified as small or micro payments: 10 cents for a cup of milk chai or $2 for a bag of fresh vegetables. That is a significant behavioral shift in what has long been a cash-driven economy.

 

Small voice boxes provided by payment apps are a fixture at snack carts and tea stalls, where vendors are too busy to check phone messages after every small transaction. A Siri-like voice declares how much money was instantly received with each payment by QR code. This has helped bridge mistrust among merchants long used to cash transactions.

 

Merchants like the cobbler and the ice cream seller at a central Delhi market who do not have their own QR code simply borrow their neighbor’s. It’s the digital version of: I don’t have change, but will make it work with the help of my neighbor.

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Pupils at a West Midlands school have been left stranded in the US for five days after a hotel inadvertently “shredded” their passports, parents have said.

Students from Barr Beacon High School in Walsall had travelled for a ski trip to Lincoln, New Hampshire, only to find that the hotel they were staying at had accidentally destroyed the travel documents.

From British school ski trip stranded in New York after hotel shreds passports:

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Hundreds of sex offenders across the UK slipped off the radar of police in a three-year period, the BBC can reveal… Calling the situation a scandal, MP Sarah Champion said the key reason so many offenders went missing was because they had changed their names.

From Hundreds of UK sex offenders went missing, figures show – BBC News:

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Financial Conduct Authority CEO Nikhil Rathi last year told the same committee he was keeping a “beady eye” on banks. On Tuesday, the parliamentarians were clearly itching for tougher action from the FCA, with a new consumer duty and a focus on good customer outcomes coming into force in July. That will heighten scrutiny on how actively banks shepherd customers into products offering better rates. Consumer inertia (or lack of confidence in making financial decisions, as the banks prefer) becomes more squarely their problem.

From UK banks have rarely had it so good (and it won’t last) | Financial Times.

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A year after closing its acquisition of Afterpay, Block (formerly Square) is seeing traction in its buy now, pay later (BNPL) business.

And the Cash App mobile wallet, management said on the conference call with analysts, is helping cement Square’s ecosystem across payments and banking.

BNPL contributed $132 million in revenues in the quarter, according to company materials, where the company reported $4.7 billion in sales. Excluding bitcoin revenue, revenue in the fourth quarter was $2.8 billion, up 33% year over year (YoY). In the fourth quarter of 2022, Square gross payments volume (GPV) was $48.6 billion, up 16% YoY on a constant currency basis.

From Savings Feature Helps Grow Block’s Customer Base | PYMNTS.com:

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The digital currency, which is backed by traditional fiat cash such as the US dollar or British pound, can bolster financial inclusion because customers don’t have to have a bank account to hold them; they can instead use encrypted “digital wallets” that exist in the cloud, on a desktop or laptop, or even on USB storage device.

From Government-backed digital money to represent $213B in payments by 2030 | Computerworld:

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Two consumer groups, AGE (“the voice of older persons at EU level”) and BEUC (“the European Consumer Organisation”), have voiced concerns about financial inclusion not being given sufficient consideration in developing the digital euro. AGE is worried that financial inclusion is an afterthought in the central bank digital currency (CBDC) design. BEUC is concerned that using the same intermediaries, such as banks, is unlikely to achieve better financial inclusion outcomes. Part of the issue is a focus on smartphone usage.

AGE and BEUC expressed their opinions as members of the Euro Retail Payments Board (ERPB).

From Digital euro: Consumer groups say financial inclusion given low priority – Ledger Insights – blockchain for enterprise:

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Financial inclusion is a commonly cited motive for CBDCs, though the Bank is somewhat circumspect about this. It makes the sensible point that the financially excluded are likely also to be digitally excluded, making the design of digital wallets to address that group difficult. It also implies that financial inclusion is the government’s job, not the Bank’s

From CBDC: Bank of England offers support for private sector it doesn’t trust – OMFIF:

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To minimize the risk of theft or loss, an offline CBDC may require secure hardware with controls to guard against unauthorized tampering, as well as a user-specific personal identification number (PIN), password or biometric authentication stored on the device itself.

From A central bank digital currency for offline payments – Bank of Canada:

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CitiGroup, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo have restricted employees’ use of ChatGPT, Bloomberg and Financial News reported Friday, joining JPMorgan Chase, as well as Amazon and multiple major public school districts to limit the use of OpenAI’s new chatbot, which has taken the internet by storm and raised concerns about sensitive information sharing.

From Workers’ ChatGPT Use Restricted At More Banks—Including Goldman, Citigroup:

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Wall Street is clamping down on ChatGPT as a slew of global investment banks impose restrictions on the fast-growing technology that generates text in response to a short prompt.

Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. are among lenders that have

From Wall Street Banks Are Cracking Down on AI-Powered ChatGPT – Bloomberg:

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