Snippings

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Mega technology companies such as Amazon, Apple, Meta and Alphabet, the parent company of Google, occupy the tricky space of being both a friend and perceived threat to traditional financial institutions.

From How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google are infiltrating financial services | American Banker:

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None of these companies have taken steps to obtain a banking license, so for now they need the support of financial institutions to offer bank products. But the prevalence of application programming interfaces and infrastructure providers means they don’t need to build financial capabilities in-house or take on the regulatory complexities,

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Despite offering services that were cheaper than M-Pesa’s in almost all price bands, Airtel – the latest incarnation of Kenya’s struggling second MNO – failed to make a dent in the market because Safaricom “refused to open M-Pesa up”, locking users within its network.4

From Beyond the neoliberal-statist divide on the drivers of innovation: A political settlements reading of Kenya’s M-Pesa success story – ScienceDirect:

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Throughout its short existence Aave has been regularly introduced new features to its platform. One such powerful feature is called the “flash loan”. This feature takes advantage of the unique design properties of blockchains to offer non-collateralized loans that are instantly issued and settled.

On a blockchain, a transaction is only finalized when it is included into a bundle of information called a block and that block is recognized by the network as the official continuation of the blockchain. Each blockchain has its own characteristics and while it takes approximately 10 minutes for a new block to be mined on Bitcoin, that period is only around 13 seconds on Ethereum, the underlying blockchain of Aave protocol. Aave flash loans therefore happen in that 13-second time windows.

From What Is Aave? Here’s Why Aave is One of the Leading DeFi Protocols | CoinCodex:

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Using crypto currency to bypass sanctions is not necessarily the best idea in the world because, as the US Treasury has made clear, the US will “track down and hold to account” anyone who helps Russia to avoid sanctions. In this they will be great aided by the much-trumpeted immutability of blockchains, which will serve to provide a permanent record of criminality to US law enforcement. Similarly, of course, those who donate cryptocurrency to Ukraine are providing a permanent record of their support to Mr. Putin and his agents.

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Bitstamp’s chief executive Julian Sawyer is urging a culture of “compliance-first” as fears mount that crypto channels are being used to sidestep Russia sanctions.

From Bitstamp boss urges ‘know-your-transaction’ crypto rules as Russia sanctions mount:

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Klarna Kosma promises to provide financial institutions, fintechs and merchants with the connectivity to build FS apps and services by providing simple and secure access to 15,000 banks in 24 countries through a single API.

From Klarna launches open banking business unit:

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Klarna Kosma promises to provide financial institutions, fintechs and merchants with the connectivity to build FS apps and services by providing simple and secure access to 15,000 banks in 24 countries through a single API.

From Klarna launches open banking business unit:

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Something interesting popped up on LinkedIn recently after I’d mentioned that I was experimenting with a newsletter. I called the newsletter “Identity is the New Money” after my book of the same name. I probably should have called the newsletter “Identity is still the New Money” to reflect the passage of time, although I am happy to report that, despite being written some years ago, the book still sells a few copies here and there!

Anyway, this led to someone asking me where the book title had come from. I wish I could take the credit, but I’m afraid the cat has long been out of the bag, so to speak. On 18th September 2008, I posted this on the Consult Hyperion blog: “If, as Sir James Crosby said in his report on the U.K. ID card scheme, ‘identity is the new money’, then banks should already have generated strategic plans to accumulate the former, now that they’ve run out of the latter.”

Yes, I first hear the phrase from Sir James Crosby. I met with him and his team a couple of times, 

 

The long-awaited publication of Sir James Crosby report into the establishment of a universal identity assurance system has come up with a list of 10 recommendations, many of which fly in the face of the current ID card proposals being tabled by the UK Government. In particular Crosby recommends that any ID card should be provided for free, it should be operated independently of government and full biometric images should not be kept.

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as Sir James Crosby said in his report on the U.K. ID card scheme, “identity is the new money”

From I’m sure banks have a strategy for this kind of thing – Consult Hyperion:

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Students of marketing learn about the “4 Ps of Marketing:” Product, Place, Price, and Promotion. According to the 4 Ps creator Northwestern professor Philip Kotler:

“The marketing mix is the set of controllable variables that the firm can use to influence the buyer’s response. The four variables help a company develop a unique selling point as well as a brand image.”

Payments have become an important element of the selling proposition and should be considered the 5th P of marketing.

Varying payment terms—for example, spreading payments for a purchase over a period of time—or providing credit before or during the shopping process, marketers can influence consumers’ likelihood to buy.

Personalizing payment terms is another way for merchants to influence consumers’ choice of products and providers—and it’s the commerce platforms who have the data, analytical capabilities, and connectivity to make this happen.

From ‘Breakout’: Apple’s Plan To Pump Up Apple Card And Apple Pay And Win The Payments War:

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