Snippings

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A cash machine has been stolen from the main arena area at the T in the Park festival.

From Cash machine stolen from main arena of T in the Park site

My son went to this pop festival, as I believe they are known, last year. I armed him with Barclaycard bPay wristband to pay for essentials whilst bopping along to the variety of popular beat combos on show. This turned out to be completely pointless because a) no-one of the stall look cards, let along contactless and b) he lost the wristband on the first day. I’ve written before about cashlessnees in these environments (e.g., my expedition to the Roskilde Festival in Denmark) and I don’t want to go over old ground again, but the advantages of getting cash out of these environments are many and varied.

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I have been to many of these “festivals” myself

They should ban cash completely from this sort of event. It is nothing but trouble. From tax-evading criminal gangs running some of the pitches to thefts and losses, to massive queues for ATMs, it is a hassle from beginning to end. The only reason to take cash to pop festivals, at least as far as I can recall, was to buy drugs.

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We didn’t have mobile payments in my day

Nowadays the kids have Venmo and PingIt and debit cards and iZettle and what not so there’s no need to put them in the vulnerable position of carrying cash. Perhaps the Scottish authorities should step in and follow the trail blazed in Ohio. Since banks and card companies won’t provide a convenient and safe alternative to cash for the purchase of mind-altering chemicals other than alcohol and Night Nurse, the state should.

Ohio’s new medical marijuana law proposes a new way around the bank problem. The law allows state officials to set up a “closed loop” payment processing system, similar to prepaid debit and gift cards.

From Cashless payment system proposed for Ohio medical marijuana program | cleveland.com

There was a very good edition of “In Business” on the BBC recently where Peter Day visited Colorado and noted the problems associate with the use of cash (“armoured cars full of cash a common sight”). This is all because of the bizarre situation in the US where marijuana is legal in some states but you can’t use electronic payments to buy it.

Alex Batlin raised this point in a discussion about digital passports for financial services, noting that the mutual acceptance and regulatory acceptance depends on being able to see that the right verifications have been performed.

regulators will not excuse an FI providing money transfer services to terrorists because they blind trusted another FI.

From Crypto 2.0 Musings – Digital Identity Passport | Alex Batlin | Pulse | LinkedIn

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That is why I am announcing this evening that the Bank intends to extend direct access to RTGS beyond the current set of [48] firms, allowing a range of non-bank PSPs to compete on a level playing field with banks.

From Mark Carney: Enabling the FinTech transformation – revolution, restoration, or reformation?

By extending RTGS access, our objective is to increase competition and innovation in the market for payment services. To ensure that PSPs are not disadvantaged relative to banks offering equivalent payment services, the Bank intends to give appropriate remuneration for balances that PSPs will be required to hold overnight to support their payments activities.

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In practice, a consumer will choose from a list of Age-Check Service Providers unless age-checking is integrated into the payment process.

From Proving Age Online Is About to Get A Whole Lot Simpler

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In the speech that the Governor of the Bank of England eh, Mark Carney, didn’t give to the Mansion House in June he devoted some considerable time to the general topic of shared ledger technology, even going so far as to say that

In the extreme, a [shared ledger] for everyone could open the possibility of creating a central bank digital currency.

From Mark Carney: Enabling the FinTech transformation – revolution, restoration, or reformation?

I am not sure that I completely follow Mr Carney’s logic here and I don’t have the benefit of the expert advice that he must have received in connection with this statement but as far as I can tell, there are two entirely separate issues to examine here. The use of the distributed ledger for RTGS, which is the context in which it is mentioned earlier in Mr. Carney’s speech, is wholly unrelated to the provision of a central bank electronic currency and whether it might or might not be a good idea for the Bank of England to create such is nothing to do with the technology.

I suspect that the confusion may have arisen because of the tendency amongst management consultants (and others) to conflate the two entirely different kinds of electronic money: a crypto currency and a digital currency are very different things. If Mr Carney were genuinely suggesting that one of the scenarios under consideration by the Bank of England is that it abandons its responsibility for managing the creation of money and instead turns to a crypto currency, even if it is a crypto currency that is produced as a byproduct of a double permissionless shared ledger spawned by the Bank of England itself, then the value of that currency would not only be beyond political control it would be beyond the Bank’s control and one might imagine the Bank to be somewhat redundant in such circumstances.

The Bank of England is absolutely right to be exploring this new technology and I certainly think that it has something to offer. But that does not mean that the Bank of England is going to start using Bitcoin as a settlement system or that bitcoins will replace Sterling!

From RTGS NBG OMG SOS SLT PDQ SLAP | Consult Hyperion

On the other hand 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. I cannot think of a single reason why such a digital currency would be a crypto currency or why it would be in any way related to the shared ledger used to process  the payments, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be a cracking idea. A digital currency platform with right APIs in place (providing risk-free, genuinely instant and zero-cost transfers between accounts) would be an amazing platform for a Digital Britain.

Alex Todd rather kindly called this a “most lucid explanation of digital identity management”

I would highly recommend this presentation to anyone interested in understanding prospective blockchain based identity architectures

From David | LinkedIn

This is very kind, but as I said in the link, this is thinking out loud and far from a fully-developed solution. We’re working on parts of this for different clients and I can see that there is something there – a genuinely new way of solving some old problems – but it’s early days.

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Norway’s BankID is to begin a pilot programme to test in-app authentication and biometric logins for one-click access to financial services.

From Norway’s BankID tests in-app authentication

They’re using the Encap platform for this with TouchID and Android fingerprint support. I was a bit surprised when I read this story, because I thought that this system already existed in the Norway. And then I remembered that I read about this stuff a decade ago.

Telenor says it will now work with the BankID consortium to develop an e-signature authentication system for use with mobile handsets.

From Norwegian telco and banks to develop mobile authentication system

How has it taken a decade to implement the obviously sensible mobile solution? It makes complete sense for the mobile operators to provide this infrastructure and for the banks to use it, but they were never able to agree (I assume) on the business model.

Brian Rommele, who I always take very seriously about this kind of thing, says that it is clear that Apple Pay in the browser will be a very big deal indeed.

In my early testing I can confirm that the checkout abandonment rate for websites that use Apple Pay Safari will be reduced significantly.

From The Apple Pay Safari Vs. PayPal Battle For Web Transactions Is An Invalid Argument. — Medium

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She waved an ID card in front of the couple and then she was escorted to read the meter where she wrote down the reading on a piece of paper.

From Phoney electric meter inspector doing the rounds in Sherborne, report police | Blackmore Vale Magazine

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Look no further than Japan’s hardware stores for a worrying new sign that consumers are hoarding cash—the opposite of what the Bank of Japan had hoped when it recently introduced negative interest rates.

From Japanese Seeking a Place to Stash Cash Start Snapping Up Safes – WSJ

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