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Rick Wingfield, a partner for the Australia Post Accelerator unit, told attendees of the Technology in Governance conference last week that he believes the technology could help the government streamline processes that involve ascertaining identity.

Wingfield said:

“If we’re going to successfully digitize the economy and the hard parts of the economy that haven’t been digitized yet … the hard things like health, education and government services, those things require trust. If we’re going to digitize some of those things, then we need to know someone is who they say they are.”

From Australia’s Postal Service Tests Blockchain Identity – CoinDesk

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FICO fraud consultant Martin Warwick, who provided the commentary in the map, said that the increased rate of personal data compromise through data breaches was one likely cause, but that customer expectations for a seamless purchasing experience also had an influence.

“We cardholders are very demanding, and if we don’t get what we want then we let people know in the form of reviews and feedback, not to mention switching cards,” Warwick said. “Banks want to avoid intervening unnecessarily when customers are shopping on the internet.

From UK Card Fraud Losses Climbed 18 Percent in 2015, Largest Rise in Europe /PR Newswire UK/

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Two men jailed in Houston and accused of using pirated computer software to steal more than 100 vehicles may have exploited an electronic vulnerability to advance auto theft into high-tech crime.

[From Police: Laptop used to reprogram, steal more than 100 cars]

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Removing cash from certain use cases is going to be tricky as it would be perceived as penalising lower income families.

[From

Cash is Dead! No. It isn’t! Pt 1

]

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Yes, we pay a credit-card fee on every transaction, but removing the mental anguish of having to deal with cash makes it more than worth it.

[From

Tribeca Citizen | Tribeca’s First No-Cash Restaurant

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in Massachusetts. A state law on the books since 1978 states that no retailer “shall discriminate against a cash buyer by requiring the use of credit.”

[From

No cash allowed: Stores refusing to accept money – The Boston Globe

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Stores don’t have to accept paper money. Despite the greenback’s apparent claim, the right for a store to refuse cash is supported both by the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve.

[From

If cash is king, how can stores refuse to take your dollars?

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1. The terminal sends a random number to the EMV chip along with the total dollar value of the transaction, if it is known. The trick here is that the total value is often unknown so early in the checkout process. So to enable the chip card to be removed from the point-of-sale (POS) terminal, the POS provides the chip a “predetermined amount” for that merchant, which is typically the same value for all payment networks. The EMV chip, using the predetermined amount, encrypts the authorization request using its crypto key and delivers this ARQC message to the POS.

2. The POS holds on to that ARQC message and indicates to the EMV chip that this transaction will be conducted as a “deferred authorization.” The EMV chip card can now be removed from the POS. The POS terminal retains the ARQC message until the checkout process has determined the total dollar value of the transaction. At that time the POS constructs an authorization message that includes the ARQC crypto-encoded message (added to Field 55), the final correct dollar value into the non-chip data field (Field 4), as well as all other required data elements. This message is sent to the issuing bank.

[From

A New Specification Enables a Fast Dip for EMV and Speeds EMV Certification. Here’s How. – PaymentsJournal

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Over the years, nonbanks have had surprisingly little difficulty replicating basic bank services.

From ‘Banking Is Necessary–Banks Are Not’ Why has banking become less and less important to America? Let us count the ways. – May 11, 1998

That’s from almost two decades ago. It was clear then that banks had only the regulatory moat to defend their 

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Most importantly, over half of WeChat users have been persuaded to link their bank cards to the app. That is a notable achievement given that China’s is a distrustful society and the internet is a free-for-all of cybercrime, malware and scams. Yet using its trusted brand, and putting to work robust identity and password authentication, Tencent was able to win over the public.

From WeChat’s world | The Economist

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