A library of snippets
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In a letter responding to questions from the UK’s Treasury Select committee chair Nicky Morgan, Visa’s European boss, Charlotte Hogg, says that 10% of 51.2 million transactions across Europe were affected during the outage, which lasted from 14.35 on 1 June until 00.45 the next day.
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The idea, if brought to full fruition (and that’s a huge “if”), could transform society. We could have transparent companies that truly reflect the will of their stakeholders, governments that truly reflect the will of their citizens, an internet freed from the corrupting value-extraction of powerful gatekeepers, the end of fake news, and massive automation of daily life for the betterment of humanity.
Well, we all want that. But, as Kevin goes on to say, more modest goals may be with our reach:
Or at least, we could have solutions that markedly improve on the status quo.
Amen to that.
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if Mr. Carney were genuinely suggesting that one of the scenarios under consideration by the Bank of England is that it creates a digital currency, then I say more power to him.
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Post-functional cash may have another niche, of course…
he can already see a future gap in the market for a restaurant aimed at people who crave the authenticity of notes and coins. “Like buying vinyl,” he asks, only half-joking, “will there be a generation who still enjoy the interaction of cash?”
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“We pay a processing fee for credit cards, and we employ about 40 people in our fraud department. That’s a cost of doing business with credit cards. When we take cryptocurrency, we have a very small transaction fee with Coinbase, much smaller than our credit card processing fee, and we have no fraud prevention department. It’s like a cash transaction. For us, that is a much cheaper way of doing business.”
From (10/1) Home – Quora.
You’d think, therefore, that merchants would be stampeding to accept Bitcoin and steering customers towards Bitcoin as a payment mechanism. But this is a very one-sided perspective: the fact that there are no chargebacks with Bitcoin is great for a merchant but what is the incentive for me as a customer? One of the reasons that I use my credit card to buy stuff is precisely so that I can charge back if I get stiffed.
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It seems reasonable to suspect that the bulk of criminal activities stamped out by the prohibition of cash would be of questionable benefit to society.
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Trust in American internet companies is at a low point, and the most complete answer to why they are choosing to comply with GDPR is that there is no competing U.S. framework for companies to stand behind.
This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if the GDPR framework were a good set of laws; however, I worry that many of the ideas that underpin the framework are extremely dangerous to the long-term health and security of democracy, and against American ideals.
From It’s Time for an American Internet Privacy Framework — The Information.
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The number of over-65s embracing tap-and-go technology has soared, boosting card transactions to become Britain’s primary payment choice
From Cash is no longer king as pensioners buy into contactless revolution.
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Deutsche Bank has today announced a pilot project with the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the trade association for the world’s airlines, to test a disruptive new payment model. Through the pilot, Deutsche Bank will look to reduce costs for processing payments between airline clients and airlines. Deutsche Bank will collect customer payments directly from consumer accounts in line with the newly revised EU Payments Services Directive, PSD2. Currently, payments are mainly processed via credit and debit transactions.
From Deutsche Bank pilots game-changing payments solution with IATA – Newsroom.
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“Social credit is preventing people from buying airline and train tickets, stopping social gatherings from happening, and blocking people from going on certain dating websites. Meanwhile, those viewed kindly are rewarded with discounted energy bills and similar perks.”
From “The odd reality of life under China’s all-seeing credit score system | WIRED UK”.
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Snippings