Snippings

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Data shows 10,784 reports of romance fraud were made to Report Fraud last year – a 29 per cent increase compared with 2024.

Overall losses equate to almost £280,000 every day, with individual victims losing an average of £9,500. In some cases, reported individual losses reached as high as £1 million.

From: Romance fraud costs UK victims £102 million in a year as reports surge by nearly a third.

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£9.4 billion stolen from UK consumers in a year – with 1 in 5 targeted by scammers

Millennials and children are increasingly becoming victim to scams, with losses soaring among younger age groups.
Shopping (purchase) scams top the list as the most common type of fraud.
Seven top tips to help consumers stay safe this festive season.
Scammers stole an estimated £9.4 billion from UK consumers over the past 12 months, according to the latest State of Scams in the UK report from the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA), in partnership with UK-leading fraud prevention service Cifas and Tietoevry Banking. One in five (20%) adults say they were targeted and had money taken, with the average victim having £878.60 stolen.

From: £9.4 billion stolen from UK consumers in a year | Cifas.

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The City of London Corporation is the local government authority for the City of London (aka the “Square Mile”), which is the historic core and financial district of London. It dates back to 1067 when William the Bastard issued a charter confirming London’s existing rights and customs shortly after his illegal invasion and regime change (although the City often treats 1189 as the real starting point because that was when Henry FitzAilwin, the first recorded Mayor of London, took office).

Talking of things that have ancient roots, the Corporation has called for support from UK technology firms for a “digital verification network” to combat fraud. The firms are being summoned to support the construction of this network to enhance security in financial institutions amid the rising fraud crisis. In essence, the digital verification network would set up a system of shared security among providers, in that once a trusted provider verified a person’s identity once, then those credentials could be used across financial institutions.

This is, in essence, the financial services passport idea that was subject of a joint TechUK/APACS working group that I co-chaired aroud the time when the London Olympics were still a warm memory. Such a passport was at the time an aspirational digital identity, issued by regulated UK financial services providers, and mutually recognised across the financial services industry. Something like Identrust but built on newer technology. As far as I can remember, we came down in favour a federated solution (ie, what would now be labelled “verifiable credentials”) rather than a blockchain-based approach, but I’d be open persuasion that other approaches could work.

The point of such an interoperable digital identity was that it could be utilised to correctly identify and authenticate end-users with appropriate security in a wide variety of circumstances and across a wide variety of channels. The need for such a service has only escalted over the years.

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Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook said Friday that tokenization is unlikely to replace traditional finance, but instead could add efficiency across the financial system.

From: Fed’s Cook: Tokenization won’t replace traditional finance | American Banker.

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“We’re going to have quantum money. You’re going to see some successor to Bitcoin that’s quantum encryption resistant. That’ll be the next move. It won’t be in the next few years, but that’s what you want to keep an eye on. There’s going to be some flurry of quantum money coins that are created in a few years’ time.”

From: Bits + Bips Podcast, 7th May 2026..

This sound a little fantastic, but it really isn’t. That mention of “quantum money coins” caught my attention because it is entirely possible to use quantum mechanics to create electronic cash using the physical properties of nature. The Swedish central bank published an interesting paper about this a few years ago which, while noting that any such implementation might be far in the future, also suggested that this could be a very good way to transmit electronic cash instantaneously across the universe.

From: (13) Sending Money is harder than Sending Pictures of Cats.

Quantum money exploits the fact that it is not possible to clone an unknown quantum state. This means that a counterfeiter, even with access to unlimited resources, will still not be able to copy a quantum coin. Why the Swedish central bank research paper wasn’t called “Schrödinger’s Cash” I’ll never know, but I guess they’re not marketing people.

In the podcast Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia and Chris Perkins go on to talk about what might come after Bitcoin. This is a subject that fascinates me, and not only because I wrote a book about (it’s called “Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin”, by the way) and have taken part in numerous discussions, panels and workshops on the topic. Ram says “It’s going to be wrapped energy, wrapped compute”. Again, something that sounds radical on first hearing but actually the idea that energy might be a future currency has a long heritage. So when they go on to observe that “the best digital asset might not yet exist” I have to say that I fundamentally agree with this (to me at least) obvious point. Bitcoin may well turn out to be the Compuserve of currency.

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But, Pay.sh lets onchain AI agents access some of Big Tech’s most powerful APIs – including Google Cloud’s Gemini, BigQuery, and VertexAI – using Solana’s stablecoin rails.

Using Pay.sh, an AI agent can browse a unified marketplace of API endpoints, receive a live rate, and pay directly from its Solana balance. Users need only onramp funds using stablecoins or a a credit card.

Pay.sh handles payment settlement and gateway authorisation on the agent’s behalf, applying rate limits, quotas, and access controls without requiring the agent to hold a Google account or rotate credentials.

From: Solana Foundation partners Google Cloud on stablecoin payments for AI agents.

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The global remittance company announced on Monday that it has formally launched its U.S. Dollar Payment Token, or USDPT.

The stablecoin, issued by Anchorage Digital Bank and built on the Solana distributed ledger, is built into Western Union’s payments systems for “always-on” settlement. The company is also building its treasury operations for USDPT with the digital asset enterprise platform Fireblocks.

From: Western Union launches its own stablecoin | American Banker.

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There was an endless exploration of loopholes around the meaning of the word usury that allowed these businesses to engage in what today is called banking. One practice was to characterize loans as gifts. The “gift” exchange somehow always ended up with the banker getting more back than he gifted out, but he wasn’t technically collecting interest.  Another practice was the bill of exchange, which would see a banker loan a customer x amount to be paid back on such and such a date.

From: Poking holes — well, loopholes — in the stablecoin-rewards debate | American Banker.

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CADD, a payment stablecoin backed 1:1 by Canadian dollars, has been launched by Tetra Digital Group after receiving regulatory approval from Alberta Treasury Board and Finance. It is now live on Base, Ethereum, and Tempo, and will soon land on Solana.

From: Tetra launches first regulated Canadian dollar stablecoin.

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The UK’s regulatory direction reflects this evolution. The Online Safety Act marks a pivotal shift, requiring platforms to identify and mitigate illegal activity, including fraud. Side-by-side with this, the Online Fraud Charter commits major technology firms to take proactive anti-fraud steps ahead of enforcement. Together, they move the debate from “who refunds fraud victims” to “who prevents fraud in the first place.”
This alignment matters particularly for young people, who are increasingly targeted not only as victims but as money mules. Banks, including Barclays and Santander have reported steep increases in youth mule recruitment, often linked to social platforms and influencer-style scams.

From: The great balancing act: Why fraud prevention must move upstream – Retail Banker International.

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