Snippings

In 2013, the total compensation of financial intermediaries (profits, wages, salary and bonuses) as a fraction of GDP was at an all-time high of around 9% of GDP.

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GDS is hoping to establish a successor project, the Identity and Attributes Exchange (IAX), as the basis for an industry standard, but the plan has met with scepticism from industry stakeholders.

From Tech sector calls on government to ‘urgently’ resolve delays in digital identity policy:

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From the fourth quarter, shoppers will be able to scan a QR code on their phones to pay using stored debit or credit cards, bank accounts, PayPal balance, PayPal Credit, Venmo balance or Venmo Rewards.

From CVS to introduce PayPal and Venmo QR code payments:

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Only 22 online public services use Verify, and only 44% of people who attempt to set up a Verify identity are able to complete the registration process. For Universal Credit applicants, the success rate is even lower, around 35%.

From Tech sector calls on government to ‘urgently’ resolve delays in digital identity policy:

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Representatives of the UK tech sector have written privately to digital secretary Oliver Dowden to express the industry’s ongoing frustration with the slow progress and continued delays in the government’s digital identity policy,

From Tech sector calls on government to ‘urgently’ resolve delays in digital identity policy:

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Digital bank Monzo has more than doubled its pre-tax losses in the last year, according to the company’s annual report for 2019–2020, which stated that “there are material uncertainties that cast significant doubt upon the Group’s ability to continue as a going concern”.

Zelle handled $133 billion in the first half of 2020. Transactions totaled 519 million, up 63% from the same period last year, according to Early Warning. Restrictions stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic, such as physical distancing, helped drive activity, the company said, as enrollment grew 17% year over year, while the count of active senders jumped 43%. Active senders are those who have sent at least one payment in the past 90 days.

The average number of transactions users sent during the period grew 10%, with the pandemic causing consumers to shift to services like Zelle to repay others for groceries or other essentials, Early Warning said.

The banks enabling Zelle for small businesses include Bank of America, Chase, Citi, Frost Bank, FirstBank, Morgan Stanley, and U.S. Bank, Early Warning said. Some of these businesses are also using the service for payroll and to pay other businesses, the company added.

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For several months this year, banks across Hubei province, an area home to 60m people, shut their doors to retail customers. Most people in the region did not notice.

The outbreak of coronavirus in Wuhan led to a sweeping closure of businesses across the city that stretched from late January to early April. Most of Hubei, the province where Wuhan is located, followed and shut down transportation, restaurants, and most shops and banks. There was no outbound travel until April 8.

ATMs remained functional and most banks in the area offer some form of online banking. But many people in Wuhan said the payment applications they use — Alipay or WeChat Pay — were enough to get them through the crisis.

From When the banks closed in Wuhan, nobody cared | Financial Times:

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Doctors should use the WhatsApp text messaging service to give patients test results and medical advice, the Health Secretary will announce today.

From Doctors should use WhatsApp to give advice, says Matt Hancock | Daily Mail Online:

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But when we think of a central bank digital currency, a trusted institution is precisely what a central bank brings to the table. And so there’s no necessity to have a distributed ledger to support that. Nevertheless, there may still be some benefits from the point of view of efficiency to using a distributed ledger, and that’s something we are exploring. But it is not something that would be a core feature of a CBDC.

From Timothy Lane on CBDCs and why the private sector is no competition for central banks – Central Banking:

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