Facebook launches WhatsApp digital payment service

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53059913


#fb #Facebook #WhatsApp #payment

Death of cash to accelerate as digital payments surge after pandemic

The use of digital cards and services such as Apple Pay and Android pay is set to increase significantly after lockdown

Contactless and digital-only payment methods such as Apple Pay and Android Pay will surge after the Covid-19 pandemic passes, a new report has found.

Britain is best placed to remain as a global hub for fintech investment despite Brexit and the recent lockdown, according to a new report by the Emerging Payments Association, which was commissioned by Luxembourg for Finance (LFF), a state-backed development agency.

The lengthy analysis of Europe’s payment methods tipped digital wallets to lead the change, replacing the more commonly used credit and debit cards.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/06/29/digital-payments-will-surge-pandemic/

#cashless #payment

GNU Taler

We provide a payment system that makes privacy-friendly online transactions fast and easy

✅ Payments without registration
✅ Data protection by default
✅ Fraud eliminated by design
✅ Not a new currency!
✅ Empowers communities to run their own payment infrastructure

💡 GNU Taler: Features
https://taler.net/en/features.html

💡 GNU Taler: Principles
https://taler.net/en/principles.html

💡 GNU Taler: Documentation and Resources
https://taler.net/en/docs.html

👀 👉🏼 https://taler.net/en/index.html

#gnu #taler #stallmann #payment #system
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_DE
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_EN
📡@BlackBox_Archiv
📡@NoGoolag

BitPay is now forcing EVERY user to both register and identify themselves when paying with bitcoin. DO NOT SUPPORT BitPay! Email your favorite online stores and tell them to change ASAP

https://teddit.net/r/Bitcoin/comments/kxhxv7/warning_bitpay_is_now_forcing_every_user_to_both


#bitpay #bitcoin #btc #cryptocurrencies #payment

Et tu, Signal?

Many technologists viscerally felt yesterday’s announcement as a punch to the gut when we heard that the Signal messaging app was bundling an embedded cryptocurrency. This news really cut to heart of what many technologists have felt before when we as loyal users have been exploited and betrayed by corporations, but this time it felt much deeper because it introduced a conflict of interest from our fellow technologists that we truly believed were advancing a cause many of us also believed in. So many of us have spent significant time and social capital moving our friends and family away from the exploitative data siphon platforms that Facebook et al offer, and on to Signal in the hopes of breaking the cycle of commercial exploitation of our online relationships. And some of us feel used.

Signal users are overwhelmingly tech savvy consumers and we’re not idiots. Do they think we don’t see through the thinly veiled pump and dump scheme that’s proposed? It’s an old scam with a new face.

Allegedly the controlling entity prints 250 million units of some artificially scarce trashcoin called MOB (coincidence?) of which the issuing organization controls 85% of the supply. This token then floats on a shady offshore cryptocurrency exchange hiding in the Cayman Islands or the Bahamas, where users can buy and exchange the token. The token is wash traded back and forth by insiders and the exchange itself to artificially pump up the price before it’s dumped on users in the UK to buy to allegedly use as “payments”. All of this while insiders are free to silently use information asymmetry to cash out on the influx of pumped hype-driven buys before the token crashes in value. Did I mention that the exchange that floats the token is the primary investor in the company itself, does anyone else see a major conflict of interest here?

Let it be said that everything here is probably entirely legal or there simply is no precedent yet. The question everyone is asking before these projects launch now though is: should it be?

I think I speak for many technologists when I say that any bolted-on cryptocurrency monetization scheme smells like a giant pile of rubbish and feels enormously user-exploitative. We’ve seen this before, after all Telegram tried the same thing in an ICO that imploded when SEC shut them down, and Facebook famously tried and failed to monetize WhatsApp through their decentralized-but-not-really digital money market fund project.

https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/signal.html

#signal #privacy #messaging #cryptocurrency #payment #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv

Signal adopts MobileCoin, a crypto project linked to its own creator Moxie Marlinspike

Many technologists today were disappointed to learn that Signal, an encrypted messaging service, is adopting MobileCoin (MOB), a new cryptocurrency that went live in December, for payments.

Signal is hugely popular in the tech world. I use it, and many of the people I correspond with use it as a safe and secure way of communicating. And many prefer it over WhatsApp and Telegram.

Now, the non-profit wants to take the next step into becoming a payments service—so you can send money, and nobody will know who you are sending it to, or why. Here’s the blog post announcing the beta build.

Andy Greenberg wrote up a story in Wired covering the main points of the announcement yesterday. The idea is to have a cryptocurrency designed to work efficiently on mobile devices while protecting users’ privacy—and anonymity. For now, Signal’s payment feature will be available only to users in the UK, and only on iOS and Android—not the desktop.

What is worth underscoring is that Moxie Marlinspike, the creator of Signal and CEO of the nonprofit that runs it, was a paid advisor to MobileCoin. In fact, he was the original CTO of the company, according to an early MobileCoin white paper.

https://amycastor.com/2021/04/07/signal-adopts-mobilecoin-a-crypto-project-linked-to-its-own-creator-moxie-marlinspike/

💡 MobileCoin white paper
https://mixin.one/assets/MobileCoin-Whitepaper-EN_FINAL.pdf

#signal #privacy #messaging #cryptocurrency #payment #marlinspike #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv

Update on beta testing payments in Signal

As the world stands today, the future of transaction privacy does not look great. The existing landscape is dominated by traditional credit companies, who over the past decade have been steadily pushing their networks for increased access to user data. They (and their data customers) are on a track to getting SKU level data of every purchase everyone makes everywhere. There are other contenders, such as regional online payments networks (like Venmo in the US), but the data story there is similar.

This is not a future we are particularly excited about. At Signal, we want to help build a different kind of tech – where software is built for you rather than for your data – so these are trends that we watch warily.

https://signal.org/blog/update-on-beta-testing-payments/

#signal #privacy #messaging #cryptocurrency #payment #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv

Russian, Indian Banks Working on New Trade Mechanism

India’s UCO Bank and Yes Bank are in talks with several Russian lenders over a new payment mechanism.

The banks are trying to work out a currency pair for the payments, with the options being the Indian rupee paired with the Russian rouble or Saudi Arabia's riyal, a senior official told the Economic Times.

Earlier it was reported by Reuters that large Indian banks were avoiding direct transactions in rupees with Russia due to fear of being targeted by Western sanctions.
#India #payment