Snippings

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Baker sits among the majority of cryptoasset investors who view tokens as a “fun investment”, according to research published this month by HM Revenue & Customs. A smaller cohort, one in five, said cryptocurrencies were “‘core part” of their investment portfolio.

From Crypto voices: investors speak about the market shock | Financial Times:

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Posing as a scholar, a Chinese woman spent years writing alternative accounts of medieval Russian history on Chinese Wikipedia, conjuring imaginary states, battles, and aristocrats in one of the largest hoaxes on the open-source platform.

From A Bored Chinese Housewife Spent Years Falsifying Russian History on Wikipedia:

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Graham sold a total of 300 9mm Parabellum bulleted cartridges for £5,800 in cash during four meetings with the buyer, who was actually an undercover police officer… Cash was also found at his home, which included banknotes showing the same serial numbers as those handed to Graham on the 13 January, when 100 rounds of live ammunition were bought.

From Coldstream Guard soldiers sold ammunition for cash, court hears – BBC News:

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The banking regulator is asking the Commission to explore the possibility of having a common application programming interface (API) standard across the EU to be developed by the industry. The EBA acknowledged that introducing a single API standard at this stage would bring additional compliance costs, but these would be outweighed by the significant benefits that would accrue as a common API would reduce barriers for new market entrants. The EBA said that this common API would also be extended in the potential move towards open finance — the expansion from access to payment accounts data towards access to other types of financial data (such as savings, investments and insurance data).

From EBA: Standard API for Open Banking in New PSD3  | PYMNTS.com:

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the EBA proposes merging the PSD2 and the Electronic Money Directive 2 as it suggests that this will resolve a significant number of challenges faced by the industry and supervisory authorities in delineating between the two legal frameworks. The EBA also suggests applying identical legal requirements for payment providers and electronic money providers, including authorization process and requirements on safeguarding, initial capital and own funds.

From EBA: Standard API for Open Banking in New PSD3  | PYMNTS.com:

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Members discussed whether current KYC regulation would need to be changed in order to accommodate such proposition. Some members noted that digital ID could be helpful in this space.

From Minutes of the CBDC Engagement Forum – May 2022 | Bank of England:

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In May, property firm Central China Management ran a 16-day campaign in which it accepted garlic as down payments for homes in China’s Qi county, a major garlic-producing region.

From Chinese property developers accept farm produce for homes – BBC News:

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Brian McAllister, director of global operations, consumer direct, at NewStore retailer Burton, says the technology will reduce the dependence on payment hardware to accept transactions, providing a complementary way to accept payments for line-busting. “The biggest advantage of this feature is it eliminates our dependence on traditional payment terminals, which means we can now offer an even more seamless and secure way to accept payments.”

From Apple’s Tap to Pay comes to the high street:

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Last but not least, Steve Pannifer, managing director of Consult Hyperion, gave a fascinating presentation comparing decentralized identity components to central banking components in his ‘Decentralized Identity – The Key to Central Bank Digital Currency.’ Is the dream of a digital currency using existing decentralized identity technology really viable to central bankers? It’s a long shot, but Pannifer gave me hope!

From Verifiable Credentials go mainstream at Identiverse 2022 | Biometric Update.

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I’ve written here before that ultra-wideband (UWB) technology will mean interesting new consumer services and new opportunities for financial services.

(As a reminder since the iPhone 11, Apple phones and watches have come with UWB, as do many Android devices. UWB means devices can determine location very accurately indeed. This means that with UWB it is possible to measure distance to a couple of inches and since apps can get this information a few times every second they can also tell whether another device is stationary, approaching or receding. For example, a UWB-enabled system can sense if you’re moving toward a locked door and it can know if you’re on the inside or outside of the doorway, to determine if the lock should remain closed or open when you reach a certain point.)

UWB chips have been used for some time for applications such as tracking players (and the ball) on a sport field or for finding equipment in hospitals, but of course what interests me is their use in financial services, beginning with payments. In Japan, NTT Docomo teamed up with Sony and NXP Semiconductors (their UWB chipset was announced last September) some time ago to let shoppers make NFC payments without having to take their phones out of their pockets by using the technology to follow user movement and positioning.

 

Now the Dutch bank

ING is piloting a peer-to-peer payments app that uses ultra-wideband (UWB) technology to let users transfer money by simply pointing one handset at another.

The Dutch bank is working with Samsung and NXP Semiconductors on the ‘Near’ app pilot, an industry first for UWB, a new technology based on radio waves that that can precisely lock onto an object, discover its location and communicate with it.

From ING pilots ultra-wideband tech for P2P contactless payments.

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In a patent granted to Apple by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday titled “Location-based credential selection for wireless transactions,” that search for the right card could be a thing of the past.

In essence, the patent suggests that a device like an iPhone could automatically present the correct credential or payment type for a nearby terminal. It does so by detecting a nearby terminal using radio technologies, such as ultra-wideband, to determine relative distance and to confirm the type of terminal being used.

The system consists of a secure transaction subsystem and a processor, with the former set up to store multiple credentials. The processor is set to receive encrypted radio polling messages from other devices, to respond, and to receive location data back from the nearby transmitter.

From Apple Pay with UWB may automatically select right card based on location | AppleInsider.

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. This takes the new location technologies into the transaction space, alongside the existing Wifi, RFID/NFC and Bluetoon technologies. Obviously this of particular interest to me because of the applications around payments, insurance and risk management but I’m sure there are kids in basements rights now working on applications that I’ve never thought.