Snippings

xxx

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:

xxx

xxx

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:

xxx

xxx

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:

xxx

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:

xxx

xxx

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.

xxx

xxx

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.

xxx

xxx

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.

xxx

xxx

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:

xxx

xxx

Jon Cunliffe, deputy governor of the Bank, consistently refuses to defend bank business models as they stand. However, they are getting a degree of cover from these plans since the Bank, for the purposes of financial stability, would disbar material volumes of digital cash to pass directly between corporations, as it would citizens, with a limit of between £10,000 and £20,000, at least initially. The Bank assumes that a move of around 20% of deposits would cause bank lending rates to rise by around 20 basis points, although it acknowledges this is an uncertain estimate.

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

xxx

xxx

I am interested in this because physical banknotes are central to the global criminal economy, and I am fascinated by how Western central banks have been issuing ever-larger volumes of them, despite the fact the legitimate use of cash money is falling everywhere, without anyone asking where they’re all going.

From Does Britcoin have a future? Central Bank Digital Currencies have a moment – Coda Story:

xxx