IBS Journal January 2017
57
Bad month for... Samsung Pay, which had been due to launch in the UK by the end of 2016 but now, following issues with UK
banks, won’t arrive until 2017. Samsung is keeping schtum on which banks it’s having problems negotiating with. It first launched Samsung Pay in the US and South Korea in 2015 and the UK is seen as a key part of its challenge to Apple’s and Google’s mobile payment offerings.
India’s government…Thousands of people across India have demonstrated against the government’s ban on 500
and 1,000 rupee notes. These were recently phased out overnight, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi defending the move as an anti-corruption measure. Chaos ensued with Indians queuing for hours outside banks and ATMs which have frequently run out of money. Opposition parties have slammed the initiative, labelling it as mishandled.
Protest rallies have been held in the cities of Lucknow, Kolkata and Bangalore. The southern state of Kerala and the eastern state of Tripura, both ruled by the Communists, saw a near total shutdown. “We are protesting against the undeclared financial emergency imposed by the government and the hardships people across the country are facing because of this illegal decision,” said Manish Tiwari of the Congress party. “The decision to demonetise high-value currency was done without any authority and legislation and is clearly illegal.”
The government wants people to move to digital payments and the likes of Paytm have seen business boom on the back of the ban. But around 90% of India’s transactions are in cash and many people do not have a bank account. The two banned notes accounted for about 86% of the cash in circulation.
The new UK polymer fiver…The Australian inventor of the polymer bank note has slammed UK vegetarians and
vegans for protesting about the country’s first ever such note containing animal fat. “It’s stupid. It’s absolutely stupid,” Professor David Solomon told the Australian radio station 2GB. “There’s trivial amounts of it in there.”
More than 130,000 people have supported an online petition urging the Bank of England to cease using animal fat in the production of the new five pound notes. “The new STG5 notes contain animal fat in the form of tallow. This is unacceptable to millions of vegans, vegetarians, Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and others in the UK,” the petition states. “We demand that you cease to use animal products in the production of currency that we have to use.”
In response, the Bank of England has issued the following statement: “We are aware of some people’s concerns about traces of tallow in our new five pound note. We respect those concerns and are treating them with the utmost seriousness. This issue has only just come to light, and the Bank did not know about it when the contract was signed. Information recently provided by our supplier, Innovia, and its supply chain shows that an extremely small amount of tallow is used in an early stage of the production process of polymer pellets, which are then used to create the base substrate for the five pound note. Innovia is now working intensively with its supply chain and will keep the Bank informed on progress towards potential solutions.”
SWIFT has confirmed that it and its member banks are still under constant cyberattack, despite efforts to shore
up security. Hackers operating after the February 2016 heist of $81 million from the Bangladeshi central bank have managed to siphon more cash from the beleaguered institutions. In a letter to members, SWIFT outlines how there is an
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