Money in a Cashless World

While in developed countries money has been digital for some time, for the rest of the world cash is still the undisputed king.

Globally 85 per cent of consumer transactions are done with cold hard cash, whereas in Australia we’ve seen cash transactions drop as low as 14 per cent. So, with the ever-increasing adoption of mobile technologies, will we see the end of traditional paper money?

Cashless | Now dine cashless with Ruplee app

Imagine eating out at a restaurant without having either cash or your debit card and credit card! It's now possible with a cashless dining app Ruplee.

Ruplee, a brainchild of Natasha Jain, redefines the payment of food and beverage bills through mobile phones across multiple top trending restaurants in Delhi-NCR including Cafe Warehouse, Townhouse Cafe, Boombox, Flying Saucer, OTB, Fork You, Raas, Chaman Lal, Lazeez Affaire, Maquina and Pure Punjab.

"With a technologically flexible vista of doing transactions, Ruplee seeks to bring evolved services to consumers which makes the payment process smart, seamless and secure," Jain, CEO and co-founder, Ruplee, said in a statement.

Currently available on Google Play Store, the app enables users to pay all 'eating out' bills via inbuilt payment mechanisms.

It also lets users keep a tab of payment history, while offering a peek into spending activities. Built by payment and security experts, Ruplee is using an Indian payment gateway, which follows the Reserve Bank of India guidelines for payment processing.

Users can pay securely by entering their CVV and 3D secure pin each time they transact.

The app will soon be available on iOS and a new version of app will be out soon with more features and usability

Source

e-Money | Money tweets! French bank users can now send money with Twitter

Cash by bird

One of France’s largest banks has launched a new service which allows its users to transfer money via Twitter. The bank claims that all Twitter users in the country will be able to use the service irrespective of their bank.

“All Twitter users who hold a French bank card can now send money via a tweet: a simple, quick, free and secure means of payment,” said BPCE banking group, France's second largest bank, in a statement.

Twitter users in France can now link their accounts to S-Money, a money-sharing application from BPCE. S-Money already allows bank customers to transfer money over cell phones via text messages.

Then the users can send a tweet by tagging the name of the person or to the organization that they want to deliver money. They should also type the sum of money along with the hashtag #envoyer (French: send).

After that they are directed to an application available on both Apple and Android, where the users will be able to finalize payment.
Source

Emirates ID as a Financial Tool

ID cards in the UAE

The United Arab Emirates biometric national ID card, the Emirates ID, is moving into its next stage. The Emirates Identity Authority has teamed up with Al Hilal Bank to run a trial of monetizing the card.  

Unlimited Access to the Internet from the Outernet

The Outernet

The "Outernet" is an idea to create a network of satellites in low earth orbit that will transmit predetermined information back to earth. The information will be multicast over wi-fi and so will be readable by most personal computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones as long as they are wi-fi capable.  And, this service would be made available free to every citizen on the planet.This project is still in the idea phase and its implementation is by no means a certainty.

The project is being talked about as if it is a way around the controls that countries have placed on internet service. But most of the websites that are slated for inclusion by Outernet at this point in time are not controversial. Most are informational or educational such as Wikipedia. One that is very interesting from a global currency / New World Order / beast government standpoint is Bitcoin Blockchain. Its inclusion in this sort of scheme would be a boost to Bitcoin's status as a global currency.

Biometric Bitcoin

Bitcoins have been gaining in popularity recently with the need to have a global currency for peer to peer transactions. Security of the transactions and savings of the virtual currency are one of the things that are holding back the use of bitcoins. Recently, an anchorman on Bloomberg TV was robbed when he showed his bitcoin gift card on television for ten seconds. That was long enough for someone to scan the QR code on the certificate with their phone. 

Now a company called SmartMetric is bringing out a biometrically secured bitcoin payment card. According to the attached article from MENA financial network, offering a secure way to store and use bitcoins will greatly aid in the growth of bitcoin as a global currency.

My Number, My Identity

The United Arab Emirates through the Emirates Identity Authority will begin requiring biometric identity verification for all mobile purchases.  This will include not only payments made to the government, but also payments made to private companies. The mobile phone will serve as an electronic signature to validate identity. Mobile numbers in the UAE are registered as part of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority’s ‘My Number, My Identity’ campaign. All numbers must be registered by January 14, 2014.

Some other countries, including Nigeria and Pakistan, require the biometric registration of all mobile phone SIM cards to validate identity for mobile transactions. In all of these cases, it is not allowed to make a mobile payment without biometric validation of identity. To those who are familiar with the book of Revelation, the parallels with the mark of the beast should be obvious.

The Future of Buying and Selling

Ali Mohammad Al Khouri, Director General of the Emirates Identity Authority presented a paper at the Middle East Retail Forum.  The title of the paper was “The impact of ID Management Infrastructure on the Commerce Sector”.  In it he stresses the security advantages of a biometrically verified ID.  It is not to hard to see that in the future it will be necessary to be a part of the biometric database in order to buy or sell anything.

In our last post here on "News of the Beast" we discussed how the UN was going to tap the experience and knowledge of the UAE's Emirates Identity Authority for a global system of biometric identification.  This time we see more of what Emirates ID is planning for future and this gives us a good idea of where the rest of the world will be going as well.  It's about buying and selling.

UAE's Emirates ID projects pave way for future eCommerce economy

Ali Mohammad Al Khouri, Director General of the Emirates Identity Authority, has stressed that the strategic projects being developed by the Authority fall in line with the UAE vision to lay the foundations of a secure modern digital economy in the country and keep pace with the accelerated transformation witnessed by businesses and industries around the world.

Dr. Al Khouri underscored that the infrastructure of digital identity plays a fundamental role in combating identity theft crimes which are threatening the global eCommerce market whose value is estimated at $2 trillion. He considered that development of trusted standard mechanisms for online identity verification should enhance customers’ trust in the modern “virtual” economic environments and double fold the value of eCommerce market.

In his paper presented at the Middle East Retail Forum in Dubai, Dr. Al Khouri said that the advanced identity verification mechanisms provided by Emirates ID have the potential to develop eCommerce in the UAE and make a quantum leap in the service sector at government and private levels. This should in turn boost the sustainable development in the UAE and enhance its global competitiveness.

In the paper entitled “The impact of ID Management Infrastructure on the Commerce Sector”, Dr. Al Khouri stated that the infrastructure developed by Emirates ID to verify and authenticate personal identity in the UAE should contribute in facilitating transformation into secure electronic environments and eliminate the challenges related to identity verification and authentication.

During the two-day forum, Dr. Al Khouri pointed to the growing challenges related to security of commercial transactions in light of statistics showing a rise in identity fraud and theft worldwide, particularly in the last two years.

He underlined the international report’s findings that the biggest challenge facing the business sector globally is to control fraud and verify customers’ identities, which necessitates setting up a mechanism for validating personal identity, noting that the UAE has gone far on the road of securing and boosting eTransactions through the advanced features of the ID card and the digital authentication centre which allows online instant validation of authenticity and reliability of the data embedded in the ID card.

Dr. Al Khouri highlighted that, more than ever, the rapid changes taking place in the contemporary world led to restructuring business and industry sectors, considering that these changes have remarkably revolutionised consumers’ behaviour making them more reliable on digital channels than traditional ones amid the unprecedented prevalence of internet, smart devices and social media networks.

http://www.albawaba.com/business/uae-id-530018

Trading Bitcoins with a Palm Scan

Bitcoin virtual currency just got easier to trade in Canada, as long as you are comfortable with a biometric scanner. You can trade bitcoins on an ATM type machine, however you must identify yourself with a palm scan first. The article below from RT (Russia Today) states that the transaction is anonymous, but you must identify yourself first.  Does this seem like an oxymoron to anyone else?

Cash-for-bitcoins: World’s first palm scan-activated bitcoin ATM to open in Canada

The world’s first bitcoin ATM will open in Vancouver, Canada, next week – dispensing Canadian dollars in exchange for the anonymous crypto-currency. But only if your palm scan matches the ATM’s records, that is.

The machine will be set up near downtown Vancouver coffee house Waves, is one of five ATMs bought by Canadian firm Bitcoiniacs from Nevada-based producer Robocoin.

The machine will exchange bitcoins for Canadian dollars via Canada’s VirtEx exchange. The transactions themselves will be anonymous, the vendor says, but clients will have to identify themselves via a palm scanner first.

This is done to enforce Canadian anti-money laundering laws, due to which the ATM will only allow transactions of up to 3,000 Canadian dollars (around $2,700) per day per customer.

The four other ATMs will be rolled out in Canadian cities such as Toronto, Montreal, Calgary or Ottawa in December, the company says.

"Basically, it just makes it easier for people to buy and sell bitcoins," Mitchell Demeter, founder of Bitcoiniacs and co-owner of Robocoin, told CBC.

http://rt.com/news/bitcoin-atm-canada-first-799/