Continue reading “Open Payments – A Big Hit in the Big Apple”
Category: Payments
Real-time payments, right now, with FedNow.
Why I Hate Account-Based Ticketing
The truth about Open Payments
Living abroad, with tokens
Living abroad, with tokens.
I have just completed a three-month stint building our business in Australia, and expect to return for a similar period in the near future. How were payments, for me? The first thing to note (to coin a phrase) is that I used no cash whatsoever and don’t recall seeing anyone else either. All retail payments, including transport payments (don’t knock commuting if you’ve never travelled to work on the Manly ferry), were via my Apple Watch, so no PINs, either. (Australia is online PIN, so if you do use an old-fashioned card, you’re unlikely to ever have to insert it into a reader.)
Of course, virtual cards, as wielded by (for example) Apple Pay and Google Pay, present tokens (Device PANs) as an alias for the Primary Account Number (PAN). This ensures that the issuer is able to block fraudulent transactions that could present the Device PAN from somewhere other than the relevant wallet (for example, during a standard e-commerce checkout).
Living and working abroad for three months requires payments for things beyond the usual touristic or business travel items—for example, rent and utility bills. Credit cards are not particularly well suited to many of these payments, with the requirement for recurring (and, sometimes, variable) payments, returnable deposits and so forth. Further, in Australia, it is standard practice for credit card payments for these kind of transactions to attract hefty surcharges. And, of course, forex charges and spreads apply.
What would have been better, would have been to have an Australian bank account and use all the domestic money transfer facilities. The trouble was, I didn’t have much idea of eligibility criteria (such as long-term residency) or how long KYC checks would take (especially without an Australian Tax File Number or driving licence, etc). Fortunately, there is a partial solution.
A number of fintechs (I used Wise) enable you to set up an account in your home country and then create (or have created, automatically) linked accounts in many other countries. Thus, I acquired an Australian BSB (Bank-State-Branch, equivalent to UK Sort Code or US/CAN Routing Number) and Account Number, exactly as any long-term resident.
In essence, the BSB/Account Number combination is a token representing my (UK-based) relationship with Wise. Just like a Device PAN, it enables a class of transactions, using a convenient digital representation; and also limits the scope of transactions; e.g. preventing anyone misusing the token from raiding my Sterling or US dollar funds.
One current limitation is that I cannot use the Australian bank details to set up a further level of indirection, that is, to use an Australian PayID, which would enable me to use a convenient handle, such as my mobile number, in place of hard-to-remember bank details (and, in fact, enable account portability). As well as providing more convenience, like other forms of token, this improves security, by making it less likely that someone impersonating me, and requesting payment, can pass off bank details which they control.
It would be nice to go one further step, which would be to use PayTo, the service set up by Australian Payments Plus, using the New Payments Platform (NPP), to manage payment relationships via mobile apps provided by banks and fintechs. I hope Wise (and others) are working on that. Then, a digital nomad could truly fit in!
Finally, a related grouch: I was frustrated, on a number of occasions, by useful apps not being available to people, demonstrably present in the relevant country, with an Apple ID associated with a different country. One example was my mobile provider; the obvious way to top up an account would be via their app, on a phone carrying their SIM, one would have thought. It was not to be, unfortunately. The same issue occurred with a government app and a newspaper app. Conceivably, I could have created an additional Apple ID or temporarily changed my residence details on the existing Apple ID. You’ve got to me braver than me to do that!
CBDCs – wallets, liability and acceptance
CBDCs are everywhere – and nowhere. Everyone is discussing them, but almost no one is actually deploying them. Sure, this is in part due to the early stage thinking that is going into working out what is actually required but it’s also due to the tricky business of actually working out how they would be implemented. Developing a retail payment solution is a lot harder than creating a Central Bank backed payment instrument.
Identity in the Metaverse
I had the privilege to chair a discussion about identity in the metaverse at the Identiverse conference in Denver in June 2022, and had great fun discussing the new landscape for identity with Heather Vescent, Jonathan Howle, Katryna Dow and Gopal Padinjaruveetil. In order to frame my thoughts and get the discussion about identity and privacy going, I needed a mental model.
Do I need to upgrade my Fare Collection system to support CBDC?
This week, a press release from China announced they had expanded acceptance of the digital Yuan onto public transport in 12 cities. China has led the way in the development of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), launching a trial in 2020 which has been expanding steadily. But what does this mean? What is a CBDC? And when will I need to consider accepting them in public transportation?
What Exactly Is A Smart Wallet?
A wallet is a way of organising things. My Apple Wallet, just like my real wallet, doesn’t have any cash in it. It has credit cards, debit cards, loyalty cards, vaccination records, boarding passes, train tickets and driving licences (Apple have just gone live with their driving licence and state in Arizona). These things are all held independently in the wallet: they don’t talk to each other and they don’t share data with each other. They are also, as you will have noticed, mostly about identity, not money.
Apple Finally Enables Payment Card Acceptance on iPhone
Contactless Card Acceptance
Solutions to enable Android phones to be used to accept EMV contactless card payments without requiring additional hardware have been around for a while. We’ve been advising and helping our clients architect, secure, build and certify SoftPOS solutions for the last 5 years. However, this has not been possible on iOS devices, until now. Speculation that Apple was looking to add contactless payment card acceptance support to iPhone grew when they bought Mobeewave for $100MM in 2020. Based on the technology acquired in this purchase, Apple has recently added contactless card acceptance capability by implementing their Proximity Reader framework to iOS 15.4, for what Apple calls Tap to Pay.