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If there’s one fintech segment that has been an unalloyed pandemic winner, it’s the business Afterpay is in: online point-of-sale installment financing. It’s benefiting from both consumers’ shift to online buying and their reluctance, in these uncertain economic times, to take on new credit card debt.

From The Pandemic Plutocrats: How Covid Is Creating New Fintech Billionaires:

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The Amorites were a Semitic people who seem to have emerged from western Mesopotamia (modern-day Syria) at some point prior to the 3rd millennium BCE. In Sumerian they were known as the Martu or the Tidnum (in the Ur III Period), in Akkadian by the name of Amurru, and in Egypt as Amar, all of which mean ‘westerners’ or ‘those of the west’, as does the Hebrew name Amorite.

From Amorite – Ancient History Encyclopedia:

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Shu-Sin (2037-2029 B.C.) attempted to forestall the encroachments of the tribal Amorites by the construction of his Wall of Mardu, or Amorite Wall. In 2034 BC he built ‘the Amorite wall’ in order to keep the city safe from barbarian attacks. But the wall did not hold them for long. The Amorites established themselves as rulers of most most of the numerous city-states and petty kingdoms into which Mesopotamia again quickly disintegrated.

From Wall of Mardu / Amorite Wall / Western Wall:

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This situation came to crisis during the latter part of the Ur III Period (also known as the Sumerian Renaissance, 2047-1750 BCE), when King Shulgi of the Sumerian city of Ur constructed a wall 155 miles (250 kilometers) long specifically to keep the Amorites out of Sumer. The wall was too long to be properly manned, however, and also presented the problem of not being anchored at either end to any kind of obstacle; an invading force could simply walk around the wall to bypass it, and that seems to be precisely what the Amorites did.

From Amorite – Ancient History Encyclopedia:

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This all took place around 2034 BCE: that is, around four thousand years ago. It seems that the idea of building symbolic walls that do nothing to prevent migration is not only not new but a fundamental human trait, as old as civilisations themselves.

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One thing that is fascinating about OnlyFans is that because it involves the exchange of real dollars, which opens up plentiful opportunities for scams and fraud, it is ironically the social platform most driven by the mantra “know your customer.” In order to sign up as a creator, you must prove your identity with a full bank, address and license validation process.

From Lessons From the Rise of OnlyFans — The Information:

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One thing that is fascinating about OnlyFans is that because it involves the exchange of real dollars, which opens up plentiful opportunities for scams and fraud, it is ironically the social platform most driven by the mantra “know your customer.” In order to sign up as a creator, you must prove your identity with a full bank, address and license validation process.

This means when it comes to the validation of social media accounts in the real world, OnlyFans creators are some of the most trusted verified accounts on the internet.

There is something deeply ironic about the fact that OnlyFans, a platform for risqué fantasy and characters, is the least likely among social networks to have a problem with fake accounts. You can trust that the creators are real people who have been validated in a way that few other platforms offer.

There is something to learn from this.

First, OnlyFans offers an example of how the desire to get paid for content online smooths the way to validating user identities. There are three major reasons other social services don’t validate the people who participate in their networks. First, the friction of going through the validation process for new accounts prevents people from signing up. Second, it is expensive and time-consuming for services to validate identities. Third, requiring proof of real-world identity is quite exclusionary, as many people can’t easily make that proof. The desire to get paid for content provides a level of motivation that overcomes at least the first two of these hurdles.

From Lessons From the Rise of OnlyFans — The Information:

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In the OnlyFans ecosystem, however, subscribing to a creator is simply another step in the monetization funnel.

A user subscribes to a creator for premium content, but that subscription doesn’t unlock everything.  Instead, creators can post content that requires separate payments per post or charge their subscribers incrementally for personal messaging.

This moves what a subscription represents from being the way the creator monetizes to being  just an important step in the funneling process—where the user demonstrates willingness to pay for content and puts a credit card on file to use for more purchases.

From Lessons From the Rise of OnlyFans — The Information:

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In the current economic downturn, to highlight the obvious example, many people make a lot mistakes in managing their finance through stressful and unfamiliar circumstances. But as was pointed out in the Wall Street Journal recently, most of these mistakes a very basic. It does not take a giant supercomputer and all of the data in the word to stop people from falling into common traps around the way they borrow, save, spend and invest.

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Jack Gavigan is the head of product and regulatory affairs at the Electric Coin Co, where he has been developing Z/Cash as a new crypto currency. He defines himself as a ‘fintechnologist focussed on virtual currencies and blockchain technology’. He is a former trader, who also worked with Mark at Starling.

From Bitcoin: Digital gold? Or just another bubble? – CSFI – YouTube:

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Eric Budish is the Steven Rothmeier Professor of Economics at Chicago’s Booth School of Business and a research associate at the NBER. He is also co-director of the University’s Initiative on Global Markets, and recently presented an important paper on Bitcoin and blockchain at the Atlanta Fed.

From Bitcoin: Digital gold? Or just another bubble? – CSFI – YouTube:

Look for changes in the use of Bitcoin, not the price of Bitcoin.

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Mark Hipperson is the CEO of Ziglu, which has recently obtained a banking license, and which offers retail customers the opportunity to trade Bitcoin at competitive rates. He is a former CTO at Starling Bank and at Centrip, and spent 11 years at Barclays on the technology side.

From Bitcoin: Digital gold? Or just another bubble? – CSFI – YouTube:

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Bank of Amsterdam

Payments and credit jumbled up

Payment instituion

OCC payment charter

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In contrast to Lynch, Republican ranking member Congressman Tom Emmer offered support for the OCC payment charter, saying it is “by no means a license to operate free from regulation”.

From US politicians weigh response to OCC payments charters:

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The McKinsey/HBR study surveyed 46,000 customers over one year and found that only seven percent used online channels exclusively for shopping; equally, only 20 percent of customers restricted their shopping to physical stores. The remaining three-quarters (73 percent) used a blend of online and physical experiences to inform their purchases and buy goods and services.

From Omnichannel: Is it the saviour of traditional retailing?:

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GLEIF (Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation) has introduced a new LEI ‘Validation Agent’ framework, which will enable FIs to simplify and accelerate LEI (legal identity identifier) issuance for their clients.

From GLEIF Defines New Framework to Simplify, Accelerate LEI Issuance:

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