Snippings

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Extra patrols in car parks are taking place daily amid a rise of people falling victim to QR code scams, a council has said.

Cheltenham Borough Council (CBC) officers are inspecting the town’s payment machines to remove the QR code stickers, following multiple reports of scammers attempting to trick residents into making payments.

From: ‘Huge increase’ in QR scams across England spark urgent warning – BBC News.

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Action Fraud reports that fake QR codes have cost UK victims nearly £3.5 million in just one year, with numbers rising as criminals continue to target pubs, restaurants, and even car parks.

From: Fake QR codes in bars and restaurants cost patrons £3.5 million – Watch Your Pocket.

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It’s no surprise that agentic commerce (enabling AI to act on behalf of shoppers) was much discussed. Checkout announced a pilot with a major UK retailer to place orders via Microsoft Co-Pilot but I suspect the bigger question isn’t technology, it’s business: who pays whom, and how value is shared between merchant, agent (Microsoft), and Checkout. Guillaume Pousaz was clear: Checkout’s interest is not in charging higher fees, but in enabling increased volume.

Merchants are cautious. With vendor announcements coming thick and fast, one very large global marketplace said: “If we have to integrate to 20 different platforms, adoption will stall.” But with 500M+ ChatGPT users globally, the pressure is mounting: AI recommendations (and how product feeds are exposed) may become as critical as SEO.

From: 9 Key Insights from the Checkout.com Conference in Venice.

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Amidst a 4,700% surge in AI-driven traffic to US retail sites, Visa says its Trusted Agent Protocol aims to address the unique challenges facing agent-driven commerce, ushering in a new era where AI can search, compare and pay on behalf of consumers, while ensuring trust between merchants and AI agents.

Developed with Cloudfare, the protocol enables approved agents to securely pass critical information to merchants. This provides a framework for recognising trusted agents with commerce intent and distinguishes them from malicious automation and rogue bots.

Visa says it has received “insightful feedback” from other early partners including Adyen, Ant International, Checkout.com, Coinbase, CyberSource, Elavon, Fiserv, Microsoft, Nuvei, Shopify, Stripe and Worldpay.

With agentic commerce widely predicted to soon become big business, Stripe has been working with OpenAI on its own Agentic Commerce Protocol while Google has lined up more than 60 partners – including Adyen, Coinbase, Mastercard and PayPal – behind its Agent Payments Protocol.

From: Visa launches Trusted Agent Protocol for AI commerce.

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Policy tools could be used to create a two-tiered financial system, which preserves existing human autonomy over their financial affairs, while ringfencing prospective AI agents’ financial autonomy. Drawing on existing frameworks for governance infrastructure (eg Chan et al (2025)), possible regulations might include: (i) mandatory registration of agent-controlled wallets; (ii) enhanced API management; (iii) purpose-restrictions or volume/value caps on agent-controlled wallets; (iv) transaction flagging and escalation mechanisms for unusual agent-initiated activity; or (v) pre-positioned denial of service powers against agents in high-risk situations.

This approach represents a form of ‘reversible unhobbling’: a governance strategy where AI systems are granted access to tools in a controllable, revocable way. If fears about agentic AI prove overstated, such policies may be scaled back.

From: Could financial infrastructure be used to govern AI agents? – Bank Underground.

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Stripe isn’t pushing one specific token. They’re building the factory that makes any token useful.

From: Stablecoins’ Infrastructure Moment.

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The human opportunity is also clear. We know that investing in digital inclusion transforms lives, opening up jobs, health and connections for people who are otherwise shut out. Our Good Things Foundation Digital Nation 2025 research found that 7.9 million people lack the digital skills needed to participate in basic online tasks, and 1.9 million people struggle to afford even mobile connectivity.

From: Digital inclusion: baked in, not bolted on – The RSA.

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Prof Mark Lee said some things to look for were “images of the person in different settings, with different backgrounds and the inclusion of real, identifiable locations”.

From: Scammers are using AI to lure shoppers to fake businesses – BBC News.

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Of course what we should actually be looking for is a verifiable credential.

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Much of what we think of as innovation in the US is just private duct tape applied to the country’s uniquely bad payments system.

From: Why I have to buy doughnuts with cash.

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The amount of money stolen in an armed robbery of a security van and ATM in County Tyrone is believed to be more than £1m.

From: Aughnacloy: More than £1m believed to be stolen in ATM theft – BBC News.

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When traditional markets face stress, they halt trading. Crypto just melts down. Whether that’s a feature or bug depends on your perspective (and your position).

From: YQ on X: “How a Tariff Announcement Turned Into Crypto’s $19 Billion Liquidation Cascade” / X.

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