Snippings

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They charge merchants fees of about 0.6% on transactions, down from the previous norm of roughly 1% on debit-card swipes.

From A dynamic duopoly – Do Alipay and Tenpay misuse their market power? | Finance & economics | The Economist:

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Alipay has a 54% share and Tenpay 39% of the Chinese mobile-payments market by value, according to Analysys, a research firm. And mobile today accounts for more than half of all non-cash retail payments in China

From A dynamic duopoly – Do Alipay and Tenpay misuse their market power? | Finance & economics | The Economist:

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NMC allegedly used fake documents to simulate orders for pharmaceutical supplies from Neopharma, and its joint-venture Nexgen, to obtain credit from banks and factoring agents that financed the fabricated sales. Thousands of irregular financing transactions amounted to more than six times the value of Neopharma’s real sales

From False invoices at centre of new NMC probe | Financial Times:

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Humby 2006

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In Humby’s formulation, data resembled oil because “it’s valuable, but if unrefined it cannot really be used. It has to be changed into gas, plastic, chemicals, etc. to create a valuable entity that drives profitable activity; so must data be broken down, analyzed for it to have value.” The emphasis on the work that is required to make information useful has been lost over the years, aided by processing power and machine intelligence, to be replaced by pure speculation. In the process of simplification, the analogy’s historical ramifications — as well as its present dangers and its long-term repercussions — have been forgotten.

From Opinion: Data isn’t the new oil — it’s the new nuclear power |:

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Wired 2014

Data in the 21st Century is like Oil in the 18th Century: an immensely, untapped valuable asset. Like oil, for those who see Data’s fundamental value and learn to extract and use it there will be huge rewards.

From Data Is the New Oil of the Digital Economy | WIRED:

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Wired 2018

“DATA IS THE new oil” is one of those deceptively simple mantras for the modern world. Whether in The New York Times, The Economist, or WIRED, the wildcatting nature of oil exploration, plus the extractive exploitation of a trapped asset, seems like an apt metaphor for the boom in monetized data.

From No, Data Is Not the New Oil | WIRED:

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James Bridle, who wrote the thought-provoking “The New Dark Age”, put forward a much better metaphor around the same time

In this way, information more closely resembles atomic power than oil — an effectively unlimited resource that still contains immense destructive power and that’s even more explicitly connected to histories of violence.

From Opinion: Data isn’t the new oil — it’s the new nuclear power |:

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So, data is the new plutonium. And personal data is the new atomic waste that no-one wants to handle because the cost of managing it

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The Federal Reserve has announced the core features of its new instant payment infrastructure, which is set to launch in 2023 and 2024.

The FedNow system is an around-the-clock instant settlement platform for retail payments. It is the Fed’s first attempt to build a new payment infrastructure in 46 years, when it launched the Automated Clearing House.

From Fed reveals instant payment plans – Central Banking:

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To misdirect the algorithm, the researchers used an image translation algorithm known as CycleGAN, which excels at morphing photographs from one style into another.

From The hack that could make face recognition think someone else is you | MIT Technology Review:

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Esther George of the Kansas City Fed outlined plans to develop an alias-based directory service at a “very early subsequent phase” to the launch of FedNow. A directory service enables consumers and business to pay using an alias, such as a mobile number or email address, instead of passing over sensitive bank details. It is often considered another key feature of a safe payments system.

From Fed reveals instant payment plans – Central Banking:

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On July 31, 2020, the Russian President signed the law on digital financial assets, digital currency and amendments to certain Russian legislation (the “Law”).

From Russia Adopts Law on Digital Financial Assets | 08 | 2020 | Publications | Insights & Publications | Debevoise & Plimpton LLP:

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To misdirect the algorithm, the researchers used an image translation algorithm known as CycleGAN, which excels at morphing photographs from one style into another.

From The hack that could make face recognition think someone else is you | MIT Technology Review:

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Card costs continue to rise as retailers spent £1.3 billion with third parties, up £70 million from 2017.  Each transaction cost retailers an average of 5.85 pence per transaction, up 17% (from 4.98 pence). These additional costs are largely driven by the fees paid by businesses to credit and debit card companies, that increased by over 50% in 2018.

From The British Retail Consortium calls for Action on Card Fees – Cash Essentials:

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