not that many decentralized models in defi land. if one adds the centralization nature of the underpaying blockchains then even less decentralization. I did find the landscape and investment themes interesting though.

US end game: keep $ as global reserve currency China end game : ¥ as new global reserve currency EU end game: none, yet should be € as a reliable alternate bitcoin end game: btc as new global reserve currency anything that happens in fintech at large (includes crypto, defi...) is purely tactical - tools serving the greater game and a meta narrative. financial, monetary and geopolitical actions will decide the greater game. …see more

‪if your favorite retail store suddenly declines to accept cash, will you‬: - patronize it more often - stop patronizing it - bring your bitcoin wallet - i don’t play sports …see more

Global #FDI has plummeted in the past 5 years, with 2020 the worst. But FDI into #Asia has held up. Real signs of #deglobalization but also of the ever growing #economic role of Asia

Really important work by our faculty, showing just how relevant #AI #research is to real world problems, like opening #Greece during the #pandemic2020

Great and sobering The Weeds podcast on getting out of #COVID19 crisis in US - aggressive #contact_tracing and/or massive/repeated #testing plus v slow relaxing of #SocialDistancing … to get #economy to 80% normal

DAILY UPDATE #COVID19USA #COVID19Testing - despite big ramp up in testing, the #US still lags well behind much of #Europe , as well as #SouthKorea . An inconvenient truth for #trumpadministration

Despite all the #Brexit chaos, there is a clear majority in the House of Commons for v soft Brexit/remain. Is the split of 7 MPs from #Labour the first step towards this outcome?

Does your company have high employee turn over? My colleague Peter Cappelli says the boss may be to blame.

Global merchants, once hesitant to step into developing markets, now see these emerging economies as lucrative sources of expansion. CEO Sebastián Kanovich of dLocal tells me that requires localized payments experiences to capture consumers in those markets. Here’s how he says dLocal’s $200 million capital raise will accelerate those efforts. …see more

Although the number of disbursements that consumers and SMBs receive has risen over the last year, barely 10% of them are sent via rails that allow those receivers to access and use those funds instantly. PYMNTS surveyed 5,000 consumers and 500 microbusinesses to examine the impact of instant payouts to their business and household cash flow, and their loyalty (or lack thereof) to the businesses sending them. Here’s what we learned. …see more

In the last 22 days, Americans have shifted, en masse, from living in a digital-often world to one that is largely digital-only — and PYMNTS ' third study of 2,000+ U.S. consumers during the course of the global pandemic offers compelling new data as proof, including a tripling in the number of consumers who buy groceries online. The COVID-19 crisis has resulted in a quantum jump in the connected economy, and faster growth. The tragedy is that many traditional physical businesses appear to have lost the possibility of a soft landing, or of gradually transitioning themselves to this digital-only world. Here’s the data and the details. …see more

The good news for SMBs hit hard by the COVID-19 crisis is that starting Friday, help is on the way – in the form of $350B in federally backed relief loans. The challenge, Planters First Bank | PFB CEO Dan Speight and Ingo Money CEO Drew Edwards told me, is that many unknowns are left to be sorted in the 24 hours between now and when the floodgates open. Including how much financial and legal liability they may face when they approve those loans. …see more

Between paper checks and mounds of paper, #B2BPayments can seem stuck in the past. Kevin Phalen , global head of Visa Business Solutions, made the case for why B2B payments have made more progress than many might think at this year's PYMNTS B2B Payments Executive Forum. Here’s what he said. …see more

There are flywheels and then there’s the #Starbucks ' Digital Flywheel – one that Brightloom CEO Adam Brotman created while there as its Chief Digital Officer. It’s now the cornerstone of Brightloom, Brotman’s latest restaurant digital adventure. He tells me about what digital flywheels, lots of them, will mean for the restaurant industry at large. …see more

The connected consumer is now just about every consumer - and the connected devices that are an indispensable part of their everyday lives are quickly becoming an indispensable part of how and who they pay. In collaboration with Visa , PYMNTS studies 2,800 U.S. consumers to understand this shift and what’s behind it. The second annual How We Will Pay report details these findings. Here are the five key insights that every innovator needs to know. …see more

#Freelancing isn’t all about being footloose and fancy-free. Navigating paperwork, banking and invoices has its challenges, after all — especially in France, where administrative tasks can be particularly onerous. Fresh off a funding round, French startup Shine wants to be the freelancer's co-pilot, CEO Nicolas Reboud tells us: https://bit.ly/2CnXJLG …see more

Gas station convenience stores are doing an about face in an effort to attract younger consumers - offering fresh food and better coffee. #Mobile payments will play a major role in that transition, the CIO of Cumberland Farms  tells me.

Consumers have been conditioned to buy what they want, when they want it. The latest PYMNTS research on the power of contextual commerce as a new commerce channel means that the next wave will happen when consumers can buy what they want, whenever they want it — and within whatever ecosystem they happen to be spending their time. Connecting those dots is left to the ecosystems that can provide that context and the payments players who can turn it into new, and often, incremental, sales for brands waiting to be discovered there. …see more

When Braintree announced last week that it hit a billion transactions in Q2, it made news. It also prompted me to ask Braintree GM, Juan B. , to take us inside the payments platform to give us a tour of that billion transaction journey.