Snippings

xxx

SoftPOS is a clearly long-term threat to payment terminals but, as PSE Consulting points out, traditional payment hardware is still needed to process offline PIN verifications (a big issue in the UK) and provide tactile key input for blind customers. And many merchants in Europe are still running on installed Windows software which limits the benefits of softPOS. The latter may explain why less than 20% of ISVs currently offer SoftPOS according to Flagship Consulting.

From: Business of Payments – May 2025 – by Geoffrey Barraclough.

xxx

The Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) certainly recommends a more robust approach than the British Bankers’ Association (now part of UK Finance) has opted for in the past. Loretta Yuen, chair of the ABS’ fraud committee told the Financial Rimes that they see “caning as a strong deterrent”, adding “It’s a deterrent, but there is also a sense of revenge to it”.

xxx

In the UK, Sainsbury’s has added softPOS to its Zebra SmartShop devices. Shoppers use the device to scan products that they put into their shopping basket. Now, instead of docking the SmartShop device at the checkout and paying on a card payment terminal, they can pay directly on the SmartShop device itself. This should save time.

From: Business of Payments – May 2025 – by Geoffrey Barraclough.

xxx

If you can’t trust international arms dealers, who can you trust?

Ukraine has paid out $770mn in advance to foreign arms brokers for weapons and ammunition that have not been delivered

From: How Ukraine lost hundreds of millions on arms deals gone wrong.

xxx

xxx

Many top creators on OnlyFans now hire ghostwriters to write posts and reply to messages.

From: The Job Market Drove Gen Z Into Sex Work. Now Wages Are Drying up. – Business Insider.

xxx

xxx

Once she selects the desired shoes, the agent offers to make the purchase for Julie and asks her to authenticate with her Passkey.

From: Visa Intelligent Commerce for Agents.

xxx

In my book “The Currency Cold War” (LPP: 2020) I wrote that “There is a real marketplace logic to the trading of asset-backed currencies in the form of tokens and I expect to see an explosion of different kinds. Assuming that one important category of asset is central bank money, then this analysis suggests that the competition that needs to be considered will be between private asset-based currencies and public fiat-backed (or synthetic) currencies”. You can see from this that I had lazily categorosed public CBDCs and public stablecoins together when, as the passage of time has made clear, they are actually very different things.

Public CBDCs have very different requirements. Stablecoins are about economics, where as CBDCs are about economics, politics and social policy. CBDCs have to be available everyone, whereas stablecoins do not.

xxx

The rewards are a big reason credit cards have become a cultural juggernaut among young Americans. As costs rise and the millennial subsidy fades, credit card rewards help a new generation live lifestyles they may not otherwise be able to afford: first-class flights, hotel rooms, and VIP concert experiences.

From: Credit Card Rewards and Points Like AmEx Give Gen Z Luxury Lifestyle – Business Insider.

xxx

xxx

The importance of operational resilience as a key requirement is being amplified and enforced by regulatory changes in the UK and Europe—namely, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority’s Operational Resilience Mandate, which had a 31 March 2025 deadline, and the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) framework deadline, which was in January 2025.

From: (13) Resilience Reloaded: Modernising Bank Connections.

xxx

xxx

But while “open banking” has found success in various corners of finance — such as by enabling faster lending decisions and new budgeting tools — it has so far failed to deliver the promise of powering a payments revolution.

From: Why Britain’s fintech dream is faltering.

xxx