'Plastic Will Do Nicely,Sir'

The UK Payments Council today stated that the use of cash by consumers, businesses and financial organisations fell to 48% of payments last year. This means that cashless payments have overtaken cash payments for the first time in the UK. The cash volumes are expected to fall further by 30% to some 34% over the next 10 years. It is claimed that 4.4% of adults ‘rarely use cash and the average ATM withdraw has fallen to £67. The previous cashless payment by cheque has dropped to just 1% of consumer payments whereas Debit card payments have now become universally accepted and account for 24% of payments.

We all have seen the emergence of credit and debit cards and now the attraction of Paypal to many who simply don’t want to input their card details every time they buy something. Even small value transaction such as a cup of coffee are increasingly done by cards and often contactless cards. Interestingly the migration to plastic has not resulted in a price increase or price differentiation by the retailers. The acceptance of Paypal has been significant catching out many traders who first balked at the higher service charges.

However, Denmark is moving closer to becoming the world's first cashless society, with the government proposes scrapping the obligation for retailers to accept cash as payment. They are proposing that as of next year, business such as clothing retailers, restaurants and petrol stations should no longer be legally bound to accept cash payments. Some 30% of the population uses an official Danske Bank app called MobilePay, which is similar to Google Wallet and other contactless cards and links a mobile to other users' phones or to a sensor at the till, allowing you to confirm payments with a simple swipe on your smartphone's screen. 

The Nordic countries of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland lead the world in cashless payments and in and Sweden in 2013 a bank robber left empty-handed, after he found out that the Stockholm bank he held up did not carry any cash..

What is interesting in the UK is to look at the proportion of cash payments by sector in 2014.

It is easy to understand low basket value retailers such as discount and convenience stores, pubs and newsagents handling cash (68%, 78.5%, 83.9% and 84.8% respectively), and high ticket retailers such as electrical stores, petrol stations and supermarkets handling significantly less cash (33.8%, 24.5%, 43.8% respectively. However the odd segment identified was Bookshops with 45.5% cash transactions which says that they are low value and maybe more convenience than we think.

Whatever, it is clear that the move to cashless is accelerating and with it comes the increasing risk of fraud and transactional payments to third party system and service providers.

PayPal Redefines PayPorn - Again

Having initially fervently defended their position the online payment service owned by eBay Inc., has no changed its policy on not processing sales of e-books containing themes of rape, bestiality or incest.PayPal, has actually learned the hard way what many already knew – that no entity today can impose censorship outside the law and if they do they will find potentially mountains of bad press in the social network space.

They have now stated another new policy that will only ban individual titles of e-books that contain potentially illegal images and text only ebooks containing child pornography themes. To many this is still a half baked position and one that could leave PayPal and its owner eBay in danger of further embarrassment and definitions are still open to interpretation and not necessarily supported by the law.

The reversal is in part due to the pressure applied not just to PayPal but to the main credit card companies who had obviously found themselves in a world of double standards and hypocrisy..

Doug Michelman, global head of corporate relations for Visa Inc., has stated that "Visa would take no action regarding lawful material that seeks to explore erotica in a fictional or educational manner." A MasterCard spokesman stated that it "would not take action regarding the use of its cards and systems for the sale of lawful materials that seek to explore erotica content of this nature."

Our original post: PayPal Bans Porn

PayPal Bans PayPorn!

Tomorrow what we can read, watch and the art we observe may not be decided by ourselves or governments and laws but by a new breed of censors. These censors may have no qualification or experience, just the ability to switch off those who they deem unfit. It’s like a McCarthy witch hut without the senate hearings, flag beating and just a darkened room and anonymous censor.

The latest technology censor has deemed erotica and pornography the evil and corrupting element that must not pass their doors. PayPal doesn’t even host any content it merely facilitates online payments. Yes, a financial service operator is now deciding what is appropriate to read and what isn’t. It can achieve this level of moral censorship by having a virtual monopoly over the business of controlling cash transfers made via the internet and also having a dominant market share over the online self-publishing channel.

Last week, without warning, PayPal merely wrote to every major self-publishing website and announced that it would refuse to process payments for clients that sell books which contain what it regards as "obscene" content. Paypal will aggressively prohibit erotic literature which contains scenes of bestiality, rape, incest and under-age sex. Ebook websites that sell such works will have their PayPal accounts deactivated. PayPal claim that they are acting under pressure from credit card companies (the likes of Visa, MasterCard, American Express, etc). This alone begs the question of hypocrisy and double standards as these companies are happy to take money from all sorts of services that are far more corrupting than erotic literature. PayPal is also owned by EBay who happily sell erotica and therefore its one rule for them and another for its customers.

It doesn’t matter how many books are effected it is the stupidity of a censorship based on subjective and unqualified self judgement in an area that they are ill qualified to judge. Will their ban apply to physical books, art , movies, music and will they come down heavy handed on all publishers or merely the self publishing market. More ridiculous is the question of how PayPal believes it is going to enforce its moral high ground. Will they ban any site from selling Nabacov, DH Lawrence, Stig Larson, Shakespeare, Suskind, Belle de Jour, Cleland, Harris, Neret, Zola, Joyce, Nin, Miller, Reage, Swinburne, Boccaccio Etc. Many artists and photographers,such as Mapplethgorpe, Newton and many more, would fall foul of these rules. After all it is ridiculous to effective ban one form of expression, literature without impacting other forms such as art, film, photography etc.

So PayPal and others have draw the line on their own definition of obscene adult content that it believes is extreme or potentially illegal. What comes next, political expression?

Advocacy groups are considering taking on the PayPal censorship case and some have already written on the subject; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) and the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC).

Perhaps someone at PayPal should enter the word 'erotica' on the parent EBay's own site!