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In the wake of a failed takeover by Visa, open banking platform Plaid is making a move into account-to-account payments.

The firm has put together an ecosystem of payment partners in North America and Europe – including Square, Dwolla and Currencycloud – that will integrate Plaid’s connectivity technology into their processing systems for bank payments.

This means that companies can add a pay-by-bank option at checkout, with the funds transfered by the ecosystem partners.

From Plaid launches A2A payments programme.

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Ian Bremner, writing in Foreign Affairs, says the most important question in geopolitics today might be whether countries that break up or clamp down on their biggest technology firms (see, for example, what has been happening in China) also be able to seize the opportunities of the digital revolution’s next phase. It is certainly reasonable ask how the dynamism of Big Tech might be used to the advantage of society while society retains some form of control.

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To understand how the struggle for geopolitical influence between technology firms and governments will play out, it is important to grasp the nature of these companies’ power. The tools at their disposal are unique in global affairs, which is why governments are finding it so hard to rein them in. Although this isn’t the first time that private corporations have played a major role in geopolitics—consider the East India Company and Big Oil, for example—earlier giants could never match the pervasive global presence of today’s technology firms. It is one thing to wield power in the smoke-filled rooms of political power brokers; it is another to directly affect the livelihoods, relationships, security, and even thought patterns of billions of people across the globe.

From How Big Tech Will Reshape the Global Order.

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Even with these limitations, however, true stablecoins have utility as a medium of exchange. They would be optimized for efficiently moving value as opposed to storing value or earning interest. Their cost structure makes them viable when their coin velocity is high and can support a large volume of payments with a small reserve.

From Stablecoins and the Future of Money:

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Wwwblockchain.com isn’t a typo. Nor is hlockchain.com or blpckchain.com.
Those sites are set up to dupe Internet users trying to reach Blockchain.com, a website that lets users buy and sell cryptocurrency.
And there’s big money in little typos. A man in Brazil paid more than $200,000 worth of bitcoin between last November and February for those and other typo Web addresses, according to sales records leaked after a hack of Epik, an Internet services company favored by the far-right. He also purchased conibase.com for more than $16,000, meant to mimic Coinbase, another cryptocurrency exchange.

From Epik hack reveals the price scammers will pay for fake cryptocurrency websites – The Washington Post.

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A hacker has breached the Argentinian government’s IT network and stolen ID card details for the country’s entire population, data that is now being sold in private circles.

From Hacker steals government ID database for Argentina’s entire population – The Record by Recorded Future:

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Yesterday it was announced that Korea’s BankID, a decentralized identity (DID) solution called MyInfo, went live on August 27 with seven banks. The solution was a joint development between the Korea Financial Telecommunications and Clearings Institute (KFTC) and Raon White Hat, a subsidiary of Raon Secure, the developer of the OmniOne blockchain.

Users create a digital identity with any of the banks by providing the usual sort of documents. The details of the digital identity that’s created are securely stored on the user’s smartphone. The customer can use the DID for bank logins and if the person wants to make an application at a different bank, they can share selected details from MyInfo with the other bank.

From 7 Korean banks go live with blockchain decentralized identity service – Ledger Insights – enterprise blockchain:

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Banks face the ever-present decision of whether to build, partner, or acquire these capabilities. Recent years have seen a material increase in the partnership model, for white labeling of third-party technology as well as banks acting as a channel or seller for such services.

From How transaction banks are reinventing treasury services | McKinsey:

Digital account opening is rated by by banks as by far their most area important of fintech partnership 

Jesper Berg is director-general of the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority. He joined the DFSA in October 2015, and was a member of the European Banking Authority’s Board of Supervisors during the Breach of Union Law case. However, he was not at the DFSA at the time that was the focus in the EBA’s investigation.

Better use of technology and closer public-private co-operation can make processes more efficient and leave more time for pursuing high-risk cases. It all begins with knowing the customer. Today, this is often a manual process involving copies of passports and form-filling that annoys the customer, who cannot understand that their bank for the last many years claims not to know them. Imagine if the bank could verify the identity of customers electronically through the use of national electronic IDs, registers of beneficial owners and using the public sector’s knowledge of close relationships to politically exposed persons!

From Technology is the best bet in fighting money laundering – Central Banking:

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It is by now widely accepted that these weaknesses emanate from: 1) variations in AML/CFT implementation and enforcement, which remains the responsibility of member states; and 2) inadequate co-ordination between AML/CFT bodies across member states. As money laundering typically involves multiple jurisdictions and a complex process of placement, layering and integration, the EU’s defences against money laundering are as strong as the weakest AML/CFT link in this chain.

From Three ways to bolster flawed AML/CFT in the EU – Central Banking:

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