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Tom Burton
Government editor
Feb 23, 2023 – 5.56pm

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Finance Minister Katy Gallagher is expected to advise state and territory digital ministers on Friday that the Commonwealth wants digital identity legislation to be introduced by the end of the year after the Albanese government pressed the go button on a national system.

From Federal government presses go for new digital identity system:

 

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Faroohar’s point is not new, but is told with unusual clarity and it comes at the right time. It is that the West should abandon globalization. Instead of it, the West should revert to trade blocs, in this case created between the nations sharing certain political values and geopolitical interests. It should use “friend-shoring”, the new term invented by Chrystia Freeland, the Canadian vice-Premier, whose recent talk at the Brookings Institution in Washington is quoted with approval by Rana Faroohar.

From Let’s go back to mercantilism and trade blocs!:

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The Federal Reserve always orders more 1-cent coins than any other denomination even though the latest available data shows that it costs the Mint 2.72 cents to make and distribute each one. Given that the Mint made 485.2 million Lincoln cents in January (representing 40% of the circulating-quality coins made in the month) that means that it made a loss of 485 * (2.72 – 1) cents. Or, to put it another way, the US Mint lost more than $8m making pointless coins that people throw in the trash because they can’t be bothered to count them up.

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As if the dual currency exchange is not enough to contend with, Argentina has around 15 different exchange rates, including a “soy dollar” for soy exports, a “Qatar dollar” for Argentine tourists travelling to the World Cup last year, and even the “Coldplay dollar”, a special exchange rate for paying foreign entertainers that made a name for itself when the band had a string of sellout concerts last year.

From Argentina diary: ‘Come armed with $100 bills’ | Financial Times:

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Closed loop payment systems are now a viable strategy for an increasing number of businesses.

That said, it’s still not easy to start a new closed loop payment system. Most of the companies exploring this are already at significant scale and are knitting together large pre-existing merchant and consumer user bases. For example, Square’s Cash App Pay connects Cash App’s ~50M+ consumers and Square’s ~5M+ merchants.

From Interchange is a burning platform – by Matt Brown:

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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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