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Patrizia Flammini’s café does brisk business selling coffee, pastries and sandwiches in the heart of Rome, with prices starting at €1.20 for an espresso.

But she said her heart sank every time a customer tried to buy small pick-me-ups using a payment card — which gives the banks a cut of the sale price. “It’s almost offensive,” she said. “I make the coffee, I wash the cups, but [the bank’s cut] is more than I earn.”

Small business owners such as Flammini may soon be spared from accepting low-value digital payments if Italy’s new rightwing coalition government has its way. In her draft budget for 2023, prime minister Giorgia Meloni has proposed giving Italian merchants the right to refuse digital payments for transactions below €60. The government also intends to raise the ceiling for legal cash transactions from €1,000 to €5,000.

From Giorgia Meloni pushes back on Italy’s shift into digital payments age | Financial Times:

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Plans by Italy’s new government to promote cash over digital payments are facing pushback from the country’s central bank over black economy and tax evasion concerns.

In its draft budget, the rightwing coalition government led by Giorgia Meloni has proposed raising the legal limit for cash transactions from €1000 to €5000 and allowing merchants to refuse digital payments of less than €60.

However, the Bank of Italy’s economic research unit chief, Fabrizio Balassone, has testified in parliament that “limitations to cash use pose a hurdle to several forms of crime and [tax] evasion.”

Merchants in Italy currently have to accept electronic payments of any value or face fines of €30 and four per cent of the transaction value.

The rule was introduced as part of Italy’s post-Covid national Recovery and Resilience Plan and linked to around €200 billion in funds from the EU.

From Italian central bank raises concerns over government’s pro-cash plans:

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At least one phone number from HSBC, Lloyds, Santander, TSB, Nationwide and Virgin Money was successfully spoofed, leaving customers of those firms potentially at risk.

From Which? claims banks are leaving customer wide open to spoofing fraud.

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Lots of them mentioned the Australian Stock Exchange and said you must be a peasant if you questioned technology that was about to be adopted in such a Serious Enterprise full of Serious People. After all, it was being built by Accenture, no less! (Cue eye-roll.)

From ongoing by Tim Bray · AWS and Blockchain.

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The courts, meanwhile, will be flooded with lawsuits because who needs to pay attorney fees when your phone can file an airtight motion for you?

From AI is going to break a lot of norms and institutions – Marginal REVOLUTION:

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Small business owners such as Flammini may soon be spared from accepting low-value digital payments if Italy’s new rightwing coalition government has its way. In her draft budget for 2023, prime minister Giorgia Meloni has proposed giving Italian merchants the right to refuse digital payments for transactions below €60. The government also intends to raise the ceiling for legal cash transactions from €1,000 to €5,000.

From Giorgia Meloni pushes back on Italy’s shift into digital payments age | Financial Times:

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The European Central Bank (ECB) view is that since Bitcoin appears to be neither suitable as a payment system nor as a form of investment, it should be treated as neither in regulatory terms and thus should not be legitimised (presumably they mean as a financial asset).

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Yet I am still not convinced that the experiment with blockchain-based finance will end up being a total failure.

If Roubini had been around in the 1720s, he likely would have said the last rites for stocks with equal fervor. But the bursting of the Mississippi and South Sea Bubbles did not mark the end of equity financing and stock trading, any more than the many financial panics of the 19th century marked the end of joint-stock banking.

From Niall Ferguson: FTX Kept Your Crypto in a Crypt Not a Vault – Bloomberg.

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The new action plan, called the Beijing Action Plan for Promoting the Innovation and Development of the Digital Human Industry, is the first of its kind, in which the government lays out the goals and prospects for all things online — and in the metaverse — that perform a human-like function.

From Beijing will regulate “digital humans” like VTubers and virtual influencers in the metaverse and beyond – Rest of World.

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ny users of metaverse or gaming platforms that could be considered part of the digital human industry will likely be required to tie their online personas to their real-life identification documents.

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Adoption rates for eNaira have been low since its launch on Oct. 25, 2021. As reported by Cointelegraph on Oct. 26 the Central Bank of Nigeria has struggled to convince its citizens to use the CBDC with less than 0.5% of the population reported having used the eNaira as of Oct. 25, a year on from its launch.

From Nigeria bans ATM cash withdrawals over $225 a week to force use of CBDC.

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In 2021, $JPM Card had $23.6bn gross revenues but only $5.1bn net revenues after reward costs & partner payments; $BAC Card similarly has $6.2bn net revenues after $6.9bn of costs

From (1) Librarian Capital on Twitter: “@noyesclt McKinsey likely overstated importance of Card to retail banks after confusing gross & net revenues In 2021, $JPM Card had $23.6bn gross revenues but only $5.1bn net revenues after reward costs & partner payments; $BAC Card similarly has $6.2bn net revenues after $6.9bn of costs https://t.co/81zH3T4Pre” / Twitter.

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