October, 2022

• 1 October

  Behind the Digital Dollar Project’s ‘Sandbox’

  

  While the Federal Reserve mulls the concept of a national digital dollar, private-sector actors are working toward the same end. The Digital Dollar Project at the end of August launched what it calls a Technical Sandbox Program in an effort, it said, to help advance understanding of the technical requirements …

September, 2022

• 1 September

  Security Notes: Auto-Referential Money: Coming Attractions

  

  Like it or not, Ponzi scheme or otherwise, Bitcoin shook the financial world, and the waves keep rippling forth. The essential revolution here is the abstract notion of “self-referential money.” Before Bitcoin, money was an entity that had an existence regardless of its role in monetary exchange, and indeed this …
• 1 September

  Global Payments Hangs a $4 Billion Price Tag on EVO

  

  The consolidation of the payment-processing business continues apace, driven by economies of scale and the challenges of keeping up with emerging technology. In the latest deal, which is expected to close in the first quarter of next year, Global Payments Inc. announced last month it will acquire EVO Payments Inc. …
• 1 September

  Payments 3.0: Fintech Turbulence Shows How Details Matter

  

  Last year, Chime got in trouble with the regulators for marketing itself as a bank. At the time, industry observers responded with a lot of snark about how it didn’t matter to the end users whether or not Chime actually held a charter, so the regulators were being ridiculous. This …

July, 2022

• 1 July

  Payments 3.0: CFPB To Fintechs: No Special Favors

  

  A series of recent actions by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau gives the fintech industry some clues for navigating the new regulatory environment. The upshot is that the Bureau has been putting the pieces in place for a new approach to regulating any company that provides a financial product to …
• 1 July

  Security Notes: CBDCs: Hit the Pause Key

  

  Central banks around the world are gripped by an uncharacteristic frenzy. Almost every central bank is at least setting up “commissions” to look into the alluring—yet jarring—prospect of redefining their national currencies. A few countries simply embraced Bitcoin, straight. The second-biggest economy in the world, China, is actively experimenting with …
• 1 July

  Square, Apple, And ‘SoftPOS’

  

  Square intrigued the payments industry a decade ago when it emerged to provide small sellers with a simple dongle they could attach to a mobile phone to accept card payments. Now Square says it’s moving to the next step. The company announced in June that later this year it will …

June, 2022

• 1 June

  Security Notes: Crypto And Modern-Day Alchemy

  

  Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle were two geniuses who labored with passion on their vision to replace gold digging with science: alchemy. It was an overshot. But their labor lay the groundwork for modern chemistry. Hundreds of years later, brilliant mathematicians try to replace gold digging with cryptographic tools. History …
• 1 June

  The New Face of BNPL

  

  At least some payments players appear to be preparing for an important new phase in the buy now, pay later business, with an opening salvo to include significantly larger loans and revised credit terms that make the advances appear more like traditional installment programs. The move comes as the short-term …

May, 2022

• 1 May

  Payments 3.0: Open Banking is here. Here’s What It Means

  

  Over the past few months, Digital Transactions has reported on how companies across the payments value chain have entered into partnerships to offer a greater range of open-banking services to their customers. Easy data access will become the norm in banking. While open banking will change how individuals manage their …