Snippings

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In the worst case, the goal of creating a single digital identity for all EU citizens would be missed completely, as there would be no bridge between sovereign and economic requirements. Instead, users would have at least two identification applications on their smartphone: one they can use for private business use cases, where registration for the app can be done easily and quickly digitally using best practices, and another for government use cases, for which the customer only uses offline methods or the eID procedure, which has not been very common in Germany up to nowcan identify.

From eIDAS regulation: The European digital market is threatened with further fragmentation – cio.de:

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Actual, there’s another degree of fragmentation here since presumably Brits would want to carry on using the British Gas quarterly bill, the gold standard of identity in our United Kingdom, or their senior citizen travel passes, which they are allowed to use to vote in elections.

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After the European Commission awarded the large-scale pilots to four consortia in December 2022, various companies have come forward as being members. Some are in more than one. The legislative process that will deliver the overall ambition of eIDAS 2 – for all Europeans to have a digital ID in a digital wallet should they want one – is still underway as the pilots go live.
Visa Europe is one of the 60 organizations that make up the EU Digital Identity Wallet Consortium (EWC), announced the company’s head of Digital Identity, Marie Austenaa in a LinkedIn post. The EWC was granted large-scale pilots by the Commission for travel, plus payments and organizational digital identity. Other members include Digidentity, Amadeus and Finnair.
One consortium was not enough for Thales. It has announced it is part of both the 148-member Potential Consortium and the NOBID Consortium.
The Potential Consortium which has been selected for pilots in Electronic Government services, Account opening, SIM registration, Mobile Driving Licence, Remote Qualified Electronic Signature, and Electronic Prescription.
NOBID is made up of Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Latvia, Germany and Italy and has partner organizations such as biometrics firm iProov and banking-based identity provider BankID. It will run pilot schemes to leverage existing payment infrastructure to enable instant payments, payment issuance and payment acceptance online and offline.

From EU Digital Identity Wallet pilots pull in big names, but questions emerge | Biometric Update:

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Past research by PYMNTS found that more than three-fourths of major retailers in the U.S. accept Apple Pay, while close to 50% of American consumers are iPhone users. However, Apple Pay accounts for just 2.4% of overall in-store purchases.

(As more recent research by PYMNTS shows, digital wallets are much more popular with people making on-line purchases than with consumers paying for things in-store. PayPal represents just 2.7% of in-store transactions compared to 13.5% online. Apple Pay accounted for 4.3% of the total amount spent on online purchases, while Google Pay’s share was 2.4%.)

From Apple Could Deny BNPL Based on Consumer History | PYMNTS.com:

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Consumers who report being very interested in using vaults are more likely to trust non-financial institutions to provide this service than those less interested. For instance, 60% of consumers very or extremely interested in using a vault would trust PayPal to provide this service and 57% would trust Amazon.

From Banks Out to Challenge Big Tech in Brewing Digital Wallet War:

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Roblox’s DAUs grew by 23% to 56 million year-over-year in 2022.
The company also sold $2.9 billion worth of “Robux,” the internal currency players use to customize their playing experience.

From The Block: The metaverse is already here: Gamers spent nearly 50 billion hours on Roblox in 2022:

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Bing hallucination

Don’t worry, it gets much worse.

“Gap Inc. reported operating margin of 5.9%, adjusted for impairment charges and restructuring costs, and diluted earnings per share of $0.42, adjusted for impairment charges, restructuring costs, and tax impacts.”

“5.9%” is neither the adjusted nor the unadjusted value. This number doesn’t even appear in the entire document. It’s completely made up.

The operating margin including impairment is 4.6% and excluding impairment is 3.9%.

From Bing AI Can’t Be Trusted – by Dmitri Brereton – DKB Blog:

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Retailers’ innovation plans for the next three years center on bringing the speed and transparency of online shopping to in-store experiences, and real-time payments are central to that strategy. Both U.S. and U.K. retailers are working to adopt real-time payment options. Just 2.6% of U.S. retailers and 6% of U.K. retailers said they want to improve support for real-time payments, but 33% of U.S. and 43% of U.K. retailers reported they want to add real-time payments options. PYMNTS’ research also finds that loyalty programs are intrinsically linked to real-time payments for many retailers, enabling ongoing customer engagement right at the point of sale.

From U.K. Retailers Lead Digital In-Store Innovation | PYMNTS.com.

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In Ukraine, US companies such as Microsoft, Starlink and Palantir have been critical in boosting the Ukrainian war effort. Microsoft has provided more than $100mn of technological assistance to Kyiv to harden the country’s digital infrastructure and secure data on the cloud. Starlink, the satellite internet company run by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has provided safe communications for Ukraine’s frontline forces. And the data company Palantir has helped optimise Ukraine’s digital “kill chain” by providing actionable intelligence drawn from satellite imagery, battlefield sensors and other open sources.

From AI warfare can empower the bad guys as well as the good | Financial Times.

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And yet—we have a tendency to judge the utility of a new technology on how well it deals with the problems of older ones. For instance, in 2007, The New York Times covered the iPhone’s launch by rhapsodizing about how easy it was to make phone calls and organize your voicemail: “One button press reveals your waiting messages, listed like e-mail. There’s no dialing in, no password.”

From We’re Reliving the Start of the Smartphone Era, This Time with AI — The Information.

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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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