Snippings

The NPP launched in 2018 and offers a 280-character description field that, in some cases, is being laced with serious abuse. The perpetrators of abuse were making low value transactions – often as little as one cent – as a means to reach their victims.

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One particular sticking point appears to be around offline use, in which transactions are validated on a peer-to-peer basis, as opposed to online checks conducted by individual banks. “The time to market for this solution is more uncertain” the ECB states. “The development of a third-party validated solution for online payments should not be delayed in case the timely delivery of a peer-to-peer validated solution for offline payments proves to be unfeasible.”

From Digital euro will not be available until 2026, at the earliest.

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Writing on the International Monetary Fund blog recently, John Kiff pointed out that as the world’s central banks rush to develop digital currencies, almost all the research and trials focus on internet-based technology. He then goes on to ask the obvious questions: What will happen when the web goes down in a war? What if there is a natural disaster? And what about the 75 percent of the world’s adult low-income population that doesn’t even have internet access? For a digital currency to be useful, it must work offline. And here, John says, the future of offline CBDCs may lie in the technological past. That’s where a little-noticed but long-running push to develop offline digital payment systems (eg, Mondex) comes in. Some of this work goes back a generation, to that long ago time before smartphones!

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Square’s Early Access Program for Tap to Pay on iPhone is officially over and the payment option is now available to all sellers in the U.S. using an iPhone and Square’s point of sale (POS) app.

From Square Opens iPhone Tap to Pay to US Sellers.

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The market is large and growing. We estimate the 2021 US market for platforms and enablers at $22 billion in total revenue across payments, lending, banking, and cards. We expect this market to more than double to $51 billion by 2026. The transaction value of embedded finance also will surge from $2.6 trillion to $7 trillion in 2026.

From Embedded Finance: What It Takes to Prosper in the New Value Chain | Bain & Company:

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The central banks of Sweden and Israel announced Wednesday (Sept. 28) that they will start exploring how central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) can be used for international retail and remittance payments in collaboration with the central bank of Norway and the Bank for International Settlements. The initiative, dubbed Project Icebreaker, will see the involved parties develop a “hub” to which participating central banks will connect their domestic proof-of-concept CBDC systems. However, because these CBDCs have so far been developed in relative isolation, how the digital shekel (Israel), the e-krona (Sweden), and the e-kroner (Norway) would interoperate has yet to be properly investigated.

From Facepay Debuts Text-To-Pay For Auto Repair Shops:

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Payments and lending will continue to be the largest embedded financial services but will be bolstered by the growth of adjacent value-added services, including insurance, tax, and accounting.

From Embedded Finance: What It Takes to Prosper in the New Value Chain | Bain & Company:

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Financial services embedded into e-commerce and other software platforms accounted for $2.6 trillion, or nearly 5%, of total US financial transactions in 2021, and by 2026 will exceed $7 trillion, our research finds.

From Embedded Finance: What It Takes to Prosper in the New Value Chain | Bain & Company:

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The operation requires one individual to be near the Tesla owner with their smartphone to capture data from the Key Card, while the other waits by the target vehicle with a device designed to to pick up data from their accomplice.

From Thieves can break into Tesla Model Ys in SECONDS using relay attack | Daily Mail Online:

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I’ve got a video of my Consult Hyperion colleague Stuart Fiske demonstrating a relay attack on a credit card from 2007 or so. It’s a well-known and well-understood threat.

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Financial institutions want law enforcement agencies to commit more time and resources to helping combat fraud in real-time payments even as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is looking into holding banks and payment processors liable for errors made by consumers.

Amid a massive increase in fraud, banks and payment processors claim they cannot be held liable when a consumer is tricked into sending a payment that later turns out to be a scam.

From Banks point to law enforcement for solutions in combating P2P fraud | American Banker.

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It is certainly an interesting debate. If you tell you bank to send money to a scammer, why is that your bank’s problem? If anyone should be held to account it should be the destination institution.