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the great strategic risk for banks is competition from big tech, said Rafael Schiozer, a professor of economics at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo

Brazil’s banks face pincer threat from big tech and fintech | Financial Times:

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During its rise, Bitcoin has taken the shape of one justly maligned form of “incumbent” organization: the religious cult. Like many digital anti-institutional organizations, Bitcoin hollows out the practices of what had already been a massively corrupt and dangerous organizational form—that is, an organized cult like Scientology—and replaces them with remarkably thin simulacra. To begin with, the language used to maintain belief in Bitcoin is viciously circular, self-justifying, wildly metaphorical, and difficult if not impossible to link to fact. And as with many cults, those selling this gospel most vociferously are also those who stand to profit disproportionately from its acceptance—an interest they fail to disclose in their evangelism.

Unlike traditional cults, though, Bitcoin has no specific creed, no single geographic location, and no truly identifiable belief system—other than Bitcoin itself.

Zealots of the Blockchain | David Golumbia:

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About four-fifths of all payments in the cash-strapped southern African economy go through mobile money,

Zimbabwe suspends mobile money transactions | Financial Times:

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The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) wants more power to require ID from travelers (“credentialing”), control who is and who is not allowed to exercise their right to travel (“vetting”), and use and share information about travelers with more third parties and for more purposes (“expanded data use”).

From TSA wants more authority for ID demands, “vetting”, and data use – Papers, Please!:

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Since the introduction of the first Bitcoin ATM in 2013, more than 8,000 machines have now been installed in over 75 countries—a sure fire indication of healthy growth in the cryptocurrency industry.

From There are now 8,000 Bitcoin ATMs globally – Decrypt:

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Merchants paid issuers $53.6 billion in Visa and Mastercard credit-card interchange fees in 2019, more than double what they paid in 2012, according to the Nilson Report, a trade publication. The growth reflects two things. First, credit-card use rose in recent years: Americans made 67% more credit-card payments in 2018 than in 2012, according to the Federal Reserve. Second, banks rolled out more cards with higher interchange fees to pay more rewards.

From The Credit-Card Fees Merchants Hate, Banks Love and Consumers Pay – WSJ:

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On April 1, 2018, the CFO at Unatrac received a phishing email containing a link, which when clicked on, redirected the CFO to a phishing site that was designed to look like a legitimate Microsoft Office365 login page. The CFO unknowingly entered his login credentials on the fake web page, giving the criminals access to his credentials and, in turn, his entire account, according to the FBI affidavit.

Okeke and others accessed the CFO’s Office365 account 464 times between April 6 and April 20, 2018, mostly from IP addresses located in Nigeria, the FBI says. They sent fraudulent wire transfer requests from the account to Unatrac’s financial team. To add credibility to their requests, the cybercriminals would send fake invoices to the CFO’s account from external accounts and forward them to the finance team, the affidavit adds.

To hide their activities from the CFO, the conspirators created or modified the email filter rules for the account, intercepted legitimate emails from the finance team, marked them as read and moved them to another folder outside the inbox, the FBI says.

The finance team at Unatrac processed 15 payments to overseas accounts, totaling a sum of about $11 million, most of which could not be recovered by the time the company discovered the fraud, according to the affadavit.

From Nigerian Entrepreneur Pleads Guilty in $11 Million BEC Scam:

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For Bump ’n Grind, an independent coffee and vinyl record shop, that is a growing burden. The shop, which roasts its own coffee beans, spent less on green beans last year ($12,827) than on the card-processing fees ($18,645) it pays to the financial institutions that enable cashless payments.

From The Credit-Card Fees Merchants Hate, Banks Love and Consumers Pay – WSJ:

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BCG say that BigTech is coming to the wealth management sector as well and will pose “a serious threat” to incumbents by offering bespoke new services to investors.