Snippings

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Swift Go, a service that enables consumers and small businesses to send near real-time payments anywhere in the world direct from their bank accounts.

Seven global banks – BBVA; Bank of New York Mellon; DNB; MYBank; Sberbank; Société Générale, and UniCredit – which collectively handle 33 million low-value cross-border payments per year, are already live with the service.

Using tighter service level agreements between institutions and pre-validation of data, Swift Go enables banks to provide their end customers a fast and predictable payments experience with upfront visibility on processing times and costs.

From Swift takes on low-value cross-border payments:

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From this month, any wristwatch sold for more than £2,000 on eBay UK must first be sent to this lab so that experts can verify if it is genuine. Only then will it be sent to the buyer.

From Time’s up for the fake wristwatch merchants of eBay | News | The Sunday Times.

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Data for today’s episode is provided by Mercator Advisory Group’s Report: 2021 Small Business PaymentsInsights: Business Operations – In the Midst of a Pandemic

Mobile Point-of-Sale Features Small Businesses Rank as Most Important:

27% of small businesses say that the initial cost of hardware is the most important feature within their mobile POS solution.
22% of small businesses say that no monthly fee or contract is the most important feature within their mobile POS solution.
12% of businesses say that a fee structure that is easy to understand and plan for is the most important feature within their mobile POS solution.
11% of small businesses say low processing/settlement fees are the most important feature within their mobile POS solution.
8% of small businesses say that Bluetooth enabled (wireless hardware) is the most important feature within their mobile POS solution.
6% of businesses say a small/portable hardware device is the most important feature within their mobile POS solution.

From Mobile Point-of-Sale Features Small Businesses Rank as Most Important: –.

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Around half of UK parents admitted they had been bemused by payments on their bank balance, only to later find out it was their child who had made the purchase.

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“We don’t need to break them up; we need to break them open,” said Tom Wheeler, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission during the Obama administration.

From Can Facebook Be Regulated? – The New York Times:

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“If total factor productivity had continued to grow at its 1957 to 1973 rate then we today would be living in the world of 2076 rather than in the world of 2014.” Sadly, the future is continuing to recede.

From The Future is Getting Farther Away – Marginal REVOLUTION.

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Speaking at the Payment Leaders’ Summit in London in October 2021, Rupert Lee-Browne (CEO of Caxton) said that he saw three key challenges for the payments business when it comes to helping merchants to grow: the cost of payments, the friction associated with current payment mechanisms and the raised expectations of consumers.

When it comes to the cost, we all understand

 

The guy who fixed my car told me that some months the bill from his acquirer can be in the region of £500-£600, which is a good chunk of his overheads.

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The Global South encompasses dozens of countries across multiple continents, and so we can’t feasibly cover every unique stew of socioeconomic and cultural issues that resulted in each of them being chained to a handful of apps. But if you take a step back and squint hard enough, what becomes clear is that Facebook was never the villain here. (Or, at least, it’s not the villain you might think it is.) Phone companies are.

From Here’s Why WhatsApp Dominates The Global South:

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if we stay on a declining real interest rate trend, the future of central banking has to include negative real interest rate policy, which involves taxing and ultimately phasing out cash

From Some philosophical questions about the future of central banking – Central Banking:

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A week after the project launch, the anonymous developer known as Evil Ape who promised that game vanished along with the project’s official Twitter account and website. But they left traces behind on the blockchain that shows they siphoned 798 ether ($2.7 million) out of the project’s funds in multiple transfers.

From Investors Spent Millions on ‘Evolved Apes’ NFTs. Then They Got Scammed:

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