Zigging and Zagging toward Mobile Payments in the US — Payments Views from Glenbrook Partners

The common wisdom around mobile payments in the US is that they will be based upon card credentials electronically inserted into secure elements in new mobile handsets that will talk to new POS terminals capable of supporting NFC or contactless payment technology. There’s been lots of activity – and accompanying industry forecasts about how we’re on the cusp of a new world of mobile payments based on NFC/contactless technology.

Almost a year ago, three of the mobile network operators in the US – Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile – announced Isis, an NFC-based approach that was going to create a new payments network to rival the payments incumbents. Post-Durbin and after listening a bit to the marketplace, Isis modified its strategy to be much more accommodating to the existing payment networks – while still remaining very NFC-centric. As a result, the major networks agreed to cooperate – time will tell exactly what that means. Trials begin in 2012.

In May, Google announced it was partnering with Citibank, MasterCard, First Data and others to launch an NFC-based Offers and Wallet – based on this technology approach. The only wrinkle in Google’s approach is that it decided that it (and not a card network, a card issuer or a wireless operator or a consortium like Isis) would manage the keys to the secure element in each handset. Google also introduced a nifty concept called SingleTap that would enable a new kind of offer redemption process at the time of payment – for those merchants who agree to deploy Google’s proprietary SingleTap POS technology.

In August, Visa announced its support for nudging this POS upgrade process along by defining a multi-year program designed to transition the US POS infrastructure from mag stripe-based today to both EMV contact and NFC/contactless technologies over the next several years.

That’s seemingly the current state of play with respect to the NFC-based approach to mobile. Everything seems to need changing – the mobile handsets, the POS terminals, along with new operational systems being required to manage and control this fundamentally different payments ecosystem. And, of course, the consumer will have to be educated and understand how all of this works – perhaps by their mobile carrier, or their issuer, or the card networks. It’s fair to say that it’s yet to be seen how that might evolve.

via Zigging and Zagging toward Mobile Payments in the US — Payments Views from Glenbrook Partners.

Financial Reform Destined To Fail, Top Federal Reserve Official Says

Reforms instituted after the financial crisis to prevent future taxpayer-funded bailouts are bound to fail and will likely be weakened within the next few years, the Federal Reserve’s longest-serving policy maker predicted Monday.

The stark warning, offered by Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig, who’s been warning about the rise of too-big-to-fail banks for more than a decade, comes as international regulators finalize plans to increase supervision of and toughen requirements on the world’s largest banking organizations as a reaction to the global financial crisis. Rather than break up big banks, politicians decided to simply subject them to more oversight.

Yet debate rages as to whether the requirements are too tough, or not tough at all, and whether regulators will have the backbone to follow through on their commitments. Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are trying to dismantle the domestic financial reform law passed last year; banks are screaming that lending will dry up, inhibiting the anemic U.S. recovery; and on the global level, regulators from some countries where large banks dominate the national economy (and thus enjoy overt taxpayer backing) are trying to weaken international accords.

For Hoenig though, the choice is clear when it comes to what to do with the financial institutions that caused the most punishing downturn since the Great Depression: break them up into pieces that regulators can understand and provide a backstop to entities engaged in the so-called real economy — but allow those dabbling in more risk-laden activities to fail.

The Obama administration and Congress chose the alternate route in passing the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law. To Hoenig, they made a mistake.

via Financial Reform Destined To Fail, Top Federal Reserve Official Says.

Bit O’Money: Who’s Behind the Bitcoin Bubble? | The New York Observer

It was a tweet from a stranger that crystallized the concept of Bitcoin for Bruce Wagner. “I can explain the benefit of Bitcoin in four words,” one of Mr. Wagner’s 12,000-some Twitter followers wrote. “Briefcases full of cash.”At the time, briefcases full of pennies seemed more apt—one unit of the new virtual currency was then worth $0.06. Then, in one day, the price of a Bitcoin jumped to $0.22. Mr. Wagner, a former I.T. specialist who now produces and stars in his own web TV shows, became obsessed with the things. He sat at his computer, too excited to eat, reading the myriad white papers, trade blogs, technical analyses and forum discussions about Bitcoin. For five days, he hardly slept. He just kept thinking, This is amazing. This is going to change everything.The last time he’d been this excited was when Windows came out. He got his hands on some Bitcoins and sold when the price doubled. It kept climbing. He invested more.Bitcoin is Internet gold, a digital currency developed by a community of programmers in 2009 that represents the first plausible manifestation of an unregulated global “cryptocurrency” first imagined by anarchist computer hackers in the late 90’s. Bitcoins are snippets of code that use encryption to prevent counterfeiting and double-spending. Complex algorithms control the money supply, in theory replacing the need for banks or a central regulator. Right now Bitcoins can be generated—or “mined”—by running a program on a powerful computer. This task requires exponentially more time and processing power as the number of Bitcoins grows, and the absolute number of Bitcoins is capped at 21 million, mimicking the scarcity of gold. There are now 6,539,450 in circulation; $2 million worth were traded on the main Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox on Friday.

via Bit O’Money: Who’s Behind the Bitcoin Bubble? | The New York Observer.

Can You Be Prosecuted for Using Gold or Silver? – Liberty Dollar by Bill Rounds

The Liberty Dollar case has had a huge impact on the world of gold and silver trading, investing, ownership and use. I covered a lot of ground in Part I and Part II, but there is another important aspect of that case that leaves the legal landscape partly shrouded in ominous and threatening clouds. What is the risk of criminal prosecution or criminal conviction to those who make or use gold and silver rounds of “original design”?

Is There A Risk Of Prosecution For Trading With Gold And Silver

To answer that, we have to fully understand the actual law that was broken. We also need to consider the existing law that was not at issue in the Liberty Dollar case, the threats of prosecutors and the effect of potential constitutional challenges to those laws if a prosecution were undertaken.

Mr. von NotHaus Violated Fraud Based Statutes

The Liberty Dollar Trial was about fraud, not a private currency system as prosecutor Anne Tomkins falsely implied. The jury was asked to decide if the elements of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud were met, nothing else. No other legal basis for the prosecution was ever presented to the jury and implying that there was another legal basis is mis-stating the facts of the case.

Critical Facts of The Case

Liberty Dollar made, sold, and used rounds that had many similarities to official US government coinage. The rounds were minted with a face value but the FRN value of the silver in the coins was less than this face value. Liberty Dollar encouraged exchanging Liberty Dollars with people who were unaware that the underlying FRN value of the silver was less than the denomination minted on its face. Liberty Dollar profited from this difference in value.

via Can You Be Prosecuted for Using Gold�or�Silver? – Liberty�Dollar by Bill Rounds.

Seth Lipsky: When Private Money Becomes a Felony Offense – WSJ.com

The next chapter in the struggle over sound money may be the case of a newly minted felon named Bernard von NotHaus. Mr. von NotHaus was convicted this month of counterfeiting money by issuing silver coins called Liberty Dollars. His company’s website says it’s been taken down by court order, and absent a successful appeal he could spend years in jail.

Mr. von NotHaus was convicted under a section of the United States Code that makes it a crime to manufacture or pass “any coins of gold or silver or other metal, or alloys of metals, intended for use as current money, whether in the resemblance of coins of the United States or of foreign countries, or of original design.” The law was enacted during the Civil War, soon after the Union began issuing the paper scrip known as greenbacks.

It is too soon to say what Mr. von NotHaus’s grounds of appeal will be, but it is not too soon to say that his case will be one to watch at a time when so many believe our economic troubles are tied to the fact that the dollar has become a fiat currency, and when leaders world-wide are calling for a new reserve currency.

So alarming has been the collapse of the dollar that the legislatures in as many as a dozen American states are considering using their authority—under Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution—to make legal tender out of gold and silver coins. Lest the ghost of Friedrich Hayek or any other advocate of privately issued money get any bright ideas, however, the von NotHaus verdict will stand as a warning.

The warning is contained in paragraph 33 of the indictment handed up against Mr. von NotHaus in a courtroom at Statesville, N.C. It said:

“Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5 of the United States Constitution delegates to Congress the power to coin money and to regulate the value thereof. This power was delegated to Congress in order to establish a uniform standard of value. Along with the power to coin money, Congress has the concurrent power to restrain the circulation of money not issued under its own authority, in order to protect and preserve the constitutional currency for the benefit of the nation. Thus, it is a violation of law for private coin systems to compete with the official coinage of the United States.”

via Seth Lipsky: When Private Money Becomes a Felony Offense – WSJ.com.

Square’s Disruptive New iPad Payments Service Will Replace Cash Registers

Mobile payments startup Square is announcing big numbers today—500,000 Square card readers shipped, 1 million Square transactions in May, and the startup is now processing $3 million in mobile payments per day. Clearly the company is on a roll in terms of traction and usage. And CEO Jack Dorsey is also revealing the next generation of Square. And Square is about to get a whole lot more disruptive.Today, Dorsey is revealing Square Register, a high-powered point of sale replacement for cash registers and point of sale terminals. And the company is taking it one step further for consumers by launching the Square Card Case, a way for purchasers to access a local merchants’ goods, prices, location, loyalty card and more.For background, Square offers an iPhone, Android and iPad app which allows merchants to process and manage credit card transactions with a handy little credit card swiping device that plugs into the headset/microphone jack. The device and service is the brainchild of Twitter co-founder and recently appointed product lead Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey. And Square recently raised $27.5 million in new funding, and announced a strategic investment from credit card company Visa. In Q1, Square did $66 million in payment volume the company expected $40 million and is now in track to process $1 billion in payment volume within a year.

via Square’s Disruptive New iPad Payments Service Will Replace Cash Registers.

Financial System Riskier, Next Bailout Will Be Costlier, S&P Says

The financial system poses an even greater risk to taxpayers than before the crisis, according to analysts at Standard  Poors. The next rescue could be about a trillion dollars costlier, the credit rating agency warned.SP put policymakers on notice, saying theres “at least a one-in-three” chance that the U.S. government may lose its coveted AAA credit rating. Various risks could lead the agency to downgrade the Treasurys credit worthiness, including policymakers penchant for rescuing bankers and traders from their failures.”The potential for further extraordinary official assistance to large players in the U.S. financial sector poses a negative risk to the governments credit rating,” SP said in its Monday report.But, the agencys analysts warned, “we believe the risks from the U.S. financial sector are higher than we considered them to be before 2008.”Because of the increased risk, SP forecasts the potential initial cost to taxpayers of the next crisis cleanup to approach 34 percent of the nations annual economic output, or gross domestic product. In 2007, the agencys analysts estimated it could cost 26 percent of GDP.Last year, U.S. output neared $14.7 trillion, according to the Commerce Department. By SP’s estimate, that means taxpayers could be hit with $5 trillion in costs in the event of another financial collapse.Experts said that while the cost estimate seems unusually high, theres little dispute that when the next crisis hits, it will not be anticipated — and it will likely hurt the economy more than the last financial crisis.

via Financial System Riskier, Next Bailout Will Be Costlier, SP Says.