Snippings

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Statistics by Financial Fraud Action (FFA) UK show fraud losses on UK payment cards totalled £567.5 million in 2015, representing an 18% increase from £479 million one year before.

From UK payment cards annual fraud losses hit £567.5 million

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Contactless now makes up one in five of all face to face card payments under £30, figures show after a five fold increase in their use by shoppers.

From Contactless soaring in popularity

So tap and pay is a tenth of a card transactions and a fifth of all low-value transactions. Having been working on contactless payment projects of one form or another for yonks, I’m so happy to see us at the point where merchants now have to have signs to tell consumers that they can’t tap rather than that they can.

[billy bishop POS]

But there’s a better way to pay that is already growing, and that is in-app.

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In both Sweden and Norway, the migration to almost total “cashlessness” is being led from the bottom up. Bills and coins now represent just 2 percent of Sweden’s economy, compared with 10 percent in the euro-zone, and only about 20 percent of all consumer payments in Sweden have been made in cash

From The Fate of Big Bills- a Catalyst for Digital Payments? | Ariadne Plaitakis | LinkedIn

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Europol has reported that sometimes criminals will pay more than face value for large notes due to their transport convenience.

From The Fate of Big Bills- a Catalyst for Digital Payments? | Ariadne Plaitakis | LinkedIn

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Android Pay, which allows owners of Android smartphones to tokenise their credit or debit cards and pay with their phones at contactless terminals, will launch in the UK “in the next few months”, promises Google.

From Does ‘pay by app’ mean an end to shopping queues? – BBC News

In the US, Google have relaunched their wallet product without the physical debit that it had before.

Google Wallet has been given a makeover, focussing peer-to-peer payments and wallet-to-bank transfers, making the physical card obsolete.

From Google ditches Wallet debit card

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Tesco’s move makes it the latest grocer to develop its own technology to bypass the costly Android and Apple systems. Sainsbury’s for instance is trialling its SmartShop app which allows users to create their own shopping lists, navigate stores and make payments at dedicated kiosks, while Walmart has launched its own system in the US to expand customer payment options and increase the speed of checkouts in its stores.

From Tesco takes on Apple with own mobile payment system – IGD Retail Analysis

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Develop an OAuth-like solution for banking and an e-KYC API like the Aadhaar card. Impress upon regulators the need to expand the set of accepted documents for KYC to reflect changing times and to promote financial inclusion while preventing illicit activity. Things like verified social media accounts or, in the case of immigrants or refugees, foreign national IDs (even ones that have expired) may work as well as a utility bill.

From Four Visions of the Future of Identity | Bank Think

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The Payments UK report on “Request to Pay” deals with 

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A NATIONAL e-payment system will advance Thailand’s financial infrastructure by another five to 10 years once it is fully implemented, a member of the national e-payment panel said. The first “any ID” service will be available around September… Each person will have a 13-digit ID number for money transfers, bill payments and other transactions.

From Thai e-payment system to use ‘any ID’ feature – The Nation

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One of the bogus arguments deployed to argue in favour of cash is that it is somehow good for poor people. It really isn’t. The people trapped in a cash economy, who are generally the poorest, are the people who face the highest transactions costs. And when things go really wrong, it’s the people who are stuck with cash who have no back-up.

A trader has lost N300million cash in the inferno that destroyed Kano’s Sabon Gari market, overnight on Saturday… Over 3,800 shops were burnt in the inferno, described as the worst market fire disaster in Nigeria, with  chairman of Sabon Gari Market traders’ association, Alhaji Nafi’u Nuhu Indabo saying  over 75 per cent of the market was burnt down.

From Trader loses N300m cash in Kano’s market fire | The NEWS

Remember when the Japanese tsunami hit? The bank and ATM networks went down (for a while) but the mobile phone networks stayed up.All of those people who had prepared for disaster by tucking away cash at home? Their money was washed away and forgotten, whereas people using cards and mobile phones went about their business with minimal interruption. I wrote about this a few years back.

After the earthquake and tsunami, the offline electronic money systems (such as Edy and nanoco) carried on working so long as there was power and the backup battery systems or generators were working, so you could still pop round to 7-Eleven and buy your staples. In fact, it was people who kept their money in cash who suffered greatly.

From The disaster in Japan has lessons for payments | Consult Hyperion

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But I doubt that cash is the solution, which I suspect will be more to do with distributed identity / reputation management. Why? Because if there are floods, fires, meteor strikes or a zombie apocalypse, there simply isn’t enough cash in circulation to support the economy

From Planning for the zombie apocalypse | Consult Hyperion

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