Snippings

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Britain’s ATMs are disappearing at a rate of 300 per month across the UK

From Three hundred cash machines disappearing each month leaving villages at risk of ATM blackout.

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The New Zealand survey, carried out in January by Auckland company Perceptive Research, shows cash may soon be a thing of the past. Only a miniscule seven per cent of Kiwis carry cash as the main form of payment, two-thirds don’t carry any at all, and 48 per cent believe it will be gone the way of the dinosaurs within a decade.

From When no change is change – NZ Herald.

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Australia’s Open Banking use cases are limited in terms of functionality, as it allows only read access, which limits payments initiation/write-access functionality—unlike UK Open Banking and PSD2, where it is allowed. However, in terms of accounts in scope, Australia includes more accounts (such as lending accounts) while these are not included in UK and PSD2.

From Open Banking framework comes to Australia | Accenture Banking Blog.

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Commercial bank seigniorage represents a structural element of subtraction of net real resources from the economy, with potentially deflationary effects on profits and/or wages, distributional consequences, and frictions between capital and labor – all effects that should be studied carefully.

From Monies (old and new) through the lenses of modern accounting | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal.

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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.

From Visa says 5.2m payments failed during 10 hour outage.

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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.

From Why Blockchain Isn’t a Revolution – Knowledge@Wharton.

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.

From Why Blockchain Isn’t a Revolution – Knowledge@Wharton.

 

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.

From Digital != crypto != virtual – 15Mb.

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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?”

From ‘Cash is just grief’: why shops and bars want to make you pay by card | Life and style | The Guardian.

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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.

From In Defense of Cash – Reason.com.

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