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BIS found that the proportion of payments made by card rose from 13 per cent of GDP in 2000 to 25 per cent in 2016. People are also holding more cards and using them more for smaller transactions.

From Cash is not dying out, despite rise of cryptocurrencies and contactless payment, report finds | The Independent

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Yet, while bitcoin and its cousins are something of a mirage, they might be an early sign of change, just as Palm Pilots paved the way for today’s smartphones.

From Bitcoin not the answer to a cashless society

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One 86-year-old Telegraph Money reader discovered fraudsters had stolen her Facebook profile picture and set up a Messenger account with her name. The scammer messaged all of her friends to inform them of a “united nation tax refund” [sic]. In order to release the money, £200 of Amazon vouchers were required.

From Facebook flaw: fake Messenger accounts can’t be reported

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Overall, 72.4 per cent of those who were infected with ransomware were able to get their data back. Most of those, however, were companies that simply ignored the ransom demands, then restored their systems with uninfected backup copies.

From Less than half of paying ransomware targets get their files back • The Register

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In July 2016, someone said they accidentally sent their crypto life savings of 1,493ETH, now worth about $1.25 million, to that address. And thanks to the magic of the blockchain, one can confirm that they were telling the truth.

From Why the Ethereum genesis address holds over $500m worth of tokens | finder.com.au

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In November DBS unveiled a technology platform in Singapore to which about 70 partners have connected over 150 applications. DBS customers eyeing a home on PropertyGuru, an online estate-agency, can check their eligibility for a loan and start applying. At Homage, which provides care for the old, you can redeem DBS credit-card reward points for an assessment of needs. Neal Cross, DBS’s chief innovation officer, calls this a “standard tech-company model”, following the examples of Amazon, Alibaba and the rest.

From How digitisation is paying for DBS – Notes from a small island

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Indeed, revealing my full personal identity to services, applications and devices is against the fundamental privacy principle of ‘data minimisation’.

Identity – in the formal/usual sense of identifying the full individual – may thus, in most cases, be a massive overshoot to requirements and quite illegal under

and ePrivacy.

From Rethinking digital identity | European Payments Council

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It is anticipated age verification will be enforceable by the end of the year.

From £25m for 5G projects on the anniversary of the UK’s Digital Strategy – GOV.UK

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Mr. Lyles secured credit cards often using fictional names and numbers the Social Security Administration hadn’t yet assigned.

From The New ID Theft: Millions of Credit Applicants Who Don’t Exist – WSJ

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“The easy access to a repository of people’s personal data has in turn spawned a burgeoning subeconomy of data miners and traders and opened up multiple avenues for illegal and unethical trading of identities.”

From “Aadhaar: India’s Flawed Biometric Database | The Diplomat”.

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