Snippings

The latest figures from the UK show that overall instant payment volumes grew by around a quarter in the last year and “single immediate payment” volumes were up by a fifth in volume and quarter in value, showing that more and more people are making payments through the system and they are sending bigger amounts from account-to-account. Open banking-initiated account-to-account payments (eg, small businesses paying taxes, for example) are a key driver.

The future is certainly bright for Faster Payments – continued growth from Open Banking A2A payments, payments initiated by overlay services such as Request to Pay and Variable Recurring payments is certainly on the agenda. The growth is likely to be bolstered through the introduction of new Faster Payment types (or flavours) as part of version 1.0 of the planned New Payments Architecture and, perhaps, through a future planned migration of Bacs Direct Credit payments into the NPA.

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The ambition, per Austin, should be for a fully digitised system that reduces cost, enables two-way communication and equal participation with the entire shareholder base and proper real-time analysis of the shareholder register.

From Let’s fix the dodgy plumbing of our shareholder democracy | Financial Times:

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The jargon around this issue — dematerialisation and disintermediation — is so off-putting that Austin came up with a broader alternative: digitisation. But the basic problem is simple: listed companies don’t know who their ultimate owners are, and nor really does anybody else.

His review found that the average FTSE 100 company has a third of its investor base “unallocated” — effectively unidentifiable — according to Refinitiv data. In the benchmark index, 29 companies have more than 40 per cent unallocated. This is a lack of transparency at best. Companies themselves might have access to more information about their investors. But in reality, say practitioners, it is far from complete: this is part of the reason that certain corporate actions take such an interminably long time.

From Let’s fix the dodgy plumbing of our shareholder democracy | Financial Times:

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Making money has proven an elusive goal for the neobanks. Just 5% of about 400 global neobanks identified by research firm Simon-Kucher and Partners have reached a break-even point,

From The neobank business model: Too dependent on interchange? – Protocol.

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My good friend Daniel Gusev, a through scholar of the period, notes the medieval and early Renaissance fintech innovations in Florence. In essence, a major extension of cashless transactions by replacing specie or bullion transfers by credit transactions verified by audit, backed by sound accounting methods across numerous industries — and secured by personal trust and reputation.

 

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Altogether the elements of the system — the social changes underpinned by propagation of tools and practices of their use — supported Florence premier position on the European trade market: the first embedded fintechs one can recognise in the activities of trade houses of Italian merchants:

The volume of trade was so big that even a theoretical fallback settlement in coin was not possible: there was just not enough coin to cover the volumes: — and from that came another benefit to the international trade: massive use of bills of exchange — further lowering of cost, risk — and resulting interest rate charged: Florentine bankers additional innovation was the creation of an accounting unit — to be compatible with other markets dominantly duodecimal (12) systems of weight and value:

From Fintech in Early Renaissance Florence: | by Daniel Gusev | Fintech Blog | Dec, 2022 | Medium.

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Open AI is at 10 exaflops right now vs. 1000 for the human brain.  Probably going to equalize in five years.

From One look at our future – Marginal REVOLUTION.

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Although the financial services sector has grown over recent decades, it employs the same number of people and a smaller proportion of the UK workforce than it did 30 years ago (Hutton, 2022).

The industry has been a big adopter of new technology, with the result that it can produce more output with less labour. This means that financial services have one of the highest levels of labour productivity of any sector in the UK.

From How important is the City to the UK economy? – Economics Observatory:

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$4B OneCoin scam co-founder pleads guilty, faces 60 years jail

From $4B OneCoin scam co-founder pleads guilty, faces 60 years jail.

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Meanwhile, research just published by LINK shows nearly half (45%) of people have been somewhere where cash has not been accepted, or has been discouraged. In the past eight weeks, the locations where cash acceptance has been the most limited has been car parks, cafes and restaurants as well as on public transport.

With more consumers preferring to pay using contactless cards and digital payments, 47% of those affected said this caused them no inconvenience. However, 49% said being unable or being discouraged to pay in cash was inconvenient.

In terms of parts of the country where people have experienced instances of a lack of cash acceptance, perhaps unsurprisingly, London came out top as a location (55%).

From Ending the malign practice of push payment fraud:

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A sign says facial recognition is used as a security measure to ensure safety for guests and employees. Conlon says she posed no threat, but the guards still kicked her out with the explanation that they knew she was an attorney.

“They knew my name before I told them. They knew the firm I was associated with before I told them. And they told me I was not allowed to be there,” said Conlon.

Conlon is an associate with the New Jersey based law firm, Davis, Saperstein and Solomon, which for years has been involved in personal injury litigation against a restaurant venue now under the umbrella of MSG Entertainment.

“I don’t practice in New York. I’m not an attorney that works on any cases against MSG,” said Conlon.

But MSG said she was banned nonetheless — along with fellow attorneys in that firm and others.

“MSG instituted a straightforward policy that precludes attorneys pursuing active litigation against the Company from attending events at our venues until that litigation has been resolved.

From MSG’s Facial Recognition at Radio City Gets Girl Scout Mom Kicked Out – NBC New York:

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