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In some cases, Pennsylvania law enforcement has deemed seized cash to be “guilty” simply because it’s been in circulation. The article cites two studies detailing how much drug residue ends up on cash, which has the possibility of turning innocent people into suspects Pennsylvania cops have no interest in charging criminally. A 2008 study showed 42% of currency had trace amounts of meth on it. A 2009 study said nearly 90% of currency is contaminated with cocaine residue. If Pennsylvania cops can’t find another pretext to seize cash, they’ll test the cash itself for drug residue and go from there.

From Pennsylvania Cops Are Still Abusing Asset Forfeiture To Help Themselves To People’s Cash | Techdirt:

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Under a quick-rebound scenario, BCG’s outlook suggests that the global payments revenue pool will expand from $1.5 trillion in 2019 to $1.8 trillion in 2024, a compound annual growth rate of 4.4%. Although solid, this CAGR is much lower than the 7.3% annual growth the industry enjoyed from 2014 to 2019.

In a slow-recovery scenario, the global revenue pool would reach $1.7 trillion by 2024, a CAGR of 2.7%. Under a deeper-impact scenario, the revenue pool would grow by only a moderate CAGR of 1.1%.

The second half of the decade, however, looks considerably brighter, driven by economic expansion, advancements in payments infrastructure, e-commerce growth, and greater financial inclusion. From 2024 to 2029, global payments revenues should rise by 4.4% to 5.6% annually, states the consultancy, roughly 1.5 times faster than the growth of banking revenues overall. By 2029, the revenue pool could swell to between $1.9 trillion and $2.4 trillion, depending on the extent of the economic recovery.

From Payments revenue growth forecasts almost halved under brightest post-Pandemic outlook:

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PBOC’s deputy governor Fan Yifei told an audience at the virtual Sibos 2020 event that until “late August” the bank had processed 3.1276 million transactions. The total value of theses add up RMB 1.1 billion ($162 million).

More than 6,700 pilot use cases have been implemented for the CBDC
“An aggregate of 113,300 personal digital wallets and 8,859 corporate digital wallets have been opened,” the deputy governor says.

From Sibos 2020: Chinese central bank processes CBDC worth $162m in 2020 – FinTech Futures:

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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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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.