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Big banks are teaming up to launch a digital wallet that people can use to shop online.

Wells Fargo WFC 2.53%increase; green up pointing triangle & Co., Bank of America Corp., BAC 1.39%increase; green up pointing triangle JPMorgan Chase JPM 1.62%increase; green up pointing triangle & Co. and four other banks are working on a new product that will allow shoppers to pay at merchants’ online checkout with a wallet that will be linked to their debit and credit cards.

The digital wallet will be managed by Early Warning Services LLC, the bank-owned company that operates money-transfer service Zelle. The wallet, which doesn’t have a name yet, will operate separately from Zelle, EWS said.

From Banks Plan Payment Wallet to Compete With PayPal, Apple Pay – WSJ.

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In 1991, the year the web got underway, there were around 100 different adult magazines being published in America. By 1997, there were around 100 pornography sites on the web. By 2020, a pornography filter would block around 2.5 million web sites. Robert Weiss, writing in Psychology Today, notes that while the growth continued unabated, there was a significant change around the millennium, where the delivery model for online pornography changed from pay-per-view sites to “user-generated” sites of one form or another. The technology has delivered vast platforms where individuals create their own adult content and earn their own money from interacting with their online audience.

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Neobanks today are also facing increased scrutiny over their compliance systems. Against the backdrop of the cost-of-living crisis and rising financial scams, regulators are probing neobanks to ensure they have the appropriate fraud and compliance systems in place.

From Will the neobank business model weather the storm?.

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Hester M. Peirce was appointed by President Donald J. Trump to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and was sworn in on January 11, 2018.

Several models for bespoke token disclosure already exist. There have been domestic and international legislative proposals, such as European Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) legislation and the recent bills in Congress,[50] my proposed safe harbor, and proposals by academics and lawyers.[51] Potential disclosure elements include source code, token economics matters like an asset’s supply schedule or protocol governance, development team, the network development plan, prior token sales, and listing the trading platforms on which the tokens trade, as laid out in my proposal.[52] Similarly, MiCA’s approach would require crypto companies to produce a white paper with information about the issuer, the crypto asset, and the related project, an explanation of rights and obligations of the asset, various technological information about the asset, and a description of investment risks.[53]

From SEC.gov | Outdated: Remarks before the Digital Assets at Duke Conference.

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FTX promoted its exchange in Africa by signaling that investing in crypto could help stop people’s money being devalued by high inflation… International customers lost all their money when the exchange collapsed in November, with disgraced former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried arrested in the Bahamas and extradited to the US on eight counts of fraud the following month.

From FTX Promoted Crypto As an Inflation Hedge in Africa, Report Says.

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“In terms of underlying techniques, ChatGPT is not particularly innovative,” said Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist, in a small gathering of press and executives on Zoom last week.

From ChatGPT is ‘not particularly innovative,’ and ‘nothing revolutionary’, says Meta’s chief AI scientist | ZDNET:

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Clubgoers wanting to try it out needed to download the app and register with a scan of a credential and a selfie. At the club door, they open the app, tap the ‘Scan QR’ button which opens the camera to then scan the venue’s unique QR code printed on a lanyard around the neck of door staff.
A biometric check of the user, e.g. via smartphone camera, to open or activate the app is not required. Ben Keirle, CEO of 1account, explained that this is not necessary for this use case and the process maintains GPG45 Level 4 standard.
Each venue also has a unique four-digit code. Scanning the QR updates the app screen to display the user’s name, photo (from the moment of app registration), age status (YES/NO to being over 18) and the venue’s code. This screen has the current time ticking away and only lasts for 15 seconds. At present, this time setting is not configurable.

From Digital ID for nightclub entry: 1account trial results at odds with Home Office findings | Biometric Update:

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A significant theft of public safety-related biometric data in the United States this weekend will not slow the adoption of facial recognition by law enforcement.
That is despite repeated and rote assurances that any biometric data collected by police is by definition safe from theft or misuse.
There are a number of reports about the servers of police IT contractor Odin Intelligence being hacked over the weekend. It is possible that a facial recognition algorithm called AFR Engine was being used by the police whose information was hacked.
According to technology news publisher Vice, 15GB of data, including biometrics involving unhoused people and criminals, have been stolen and shared. A group Vice described as a transparency organization – Distributed Denial of Secrets – reportedly was given the files and shared them with another Vice Media Group publication.
The data included mugshots and fingerprint biometrics, according to TechCrunch. At least some of the data is reportedly unencrypted.
A leak of biometric data from police was not unexpected.

From Leak of police biometric data won’t change America’s regulation debate | Biometric Update:

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Putative class action number 22CV40791 is being heard in Portland, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. The class action seeks a cease-and-desist judgment and compensatory or statutory damages of $1,000 for each day the company is found to be in violation of the law but no less than $10 million.
Jacksons, which is based in Idaho, has been a focal point in the local debate about facial recognition.
The successful campaign to largely ban surveillance and identification often turned to Jacksons’ signs telling people who intend to enter one of the stores to look at a camera so that their face can be compared to a persona non grata database. The door does not open for anyone matched by the software with a photo on the database.

From Biometric data privacy cases expand beyond BIPA with new filing in Oregon | Biometric Update:

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Red Date Technology is also known as the developer of the Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN), the China state-backed blockchain network.

From The Universal Digital Payments Network launches at WEF.

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