3.4.19 Your morning briefing

The information you need to start your day, from PaymentsSource and around the Web:

Point and pay
Banco Sabadell is pushing an in-body NFC chip that allows people to pay by moving their hand near a contactless terminal.

The chip is injected in the skin between the tip of the thumb and the index finger, reports Finextra, which adds the bank was demonstrating the technology at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Implantable transaction technology isn't brand new. Technology companies in Sweden and Wisconsin have built similar implantable systems, though payment experts have warned there's still not a compelling reason for people to surgically install computing devices.

Angel Garcia/Bloomberg

Amazon mart
Amazon will soon open dozens of grocery stores in the U.S., as part of a broader effort to expand its retail reach.

The first store will open in Los Angeles before the end of 2019, reports The Wall Street Journal, which adds other locations will quickly follow, and will be distinct from Whole Foods, which Amazon acquired in 2017. Amazon may also acquire other local supermarkets, the Journal reported.

Amazon is expanding beyond its core e-commerce model through Whole Foods, its cashierless Amazon Go store and other Amazon initiatives. These moves have caused other retailers to respond, either through moves like Walmart's innovation labs or third-party technology.

U.K. headquarters
U.K. regulators are working on various projects to advance digitization, and several agencies are consolidating to simplify the work on standards and other rules for e-commerce, mobile and faster processing.

Pay.UK will house Bacs, Faster Payments and Check and Credit agencies. The system is more geared toward easier collaboration than the external user experience, which the agencies say will remain the same.

The consolidated agencies oversee about $10 trillion in payments each year, according to a release.

Instant finance
Klarna and PayBright are collaborating to offer instant financing for shoppers in Canada.

For Klarna, the move is an attempt to support easy deployment for retailers via PayBright's point of sale financing engine, with coverage for the entire North American market.

Klarna has entered into similar partnerships to extend its point of sale installment payments product, including a deal with Magento about a year ago. Klarna has also drawn investment from Visa.

From the Web

A New York Bank is Opening Accounts for Bermuda’s Crypto Startups
CCN | Fri March 1, 2019 - Cryptocurrency startups in Bermuda can now open bank accounts in New York. The Government of Bermuda announced that it is partnering with New York-based Signature Bank. The deal will allow the island nation’s FinTech companies to access US banking services.

Smartphone-Wielding Chinese Tourists Challenge Cash’s Reign
The Wall Street Journal | Sun March 3, 2019 - Japan, usually a high-tech model for China, is learning from its neighbor how people can pay without cash. Old-time paper money has reigned supreme in Japan, but that is beginning to change, thanks to a flood of Chinese tourists who expect to pay with a phone like they do back home.

Minds CEO Challenges Twitter’s Jack Dorsey to Walk the Walk on Bitcoin
CCN | Sat March 2, 2019 - Minds.com CEO Bill Ottman talked about the importance of open source and decentralization. Ottman said that Zuckerberg and Dorsey demonstrated a philosophical conflict by adopting cryptocurrency – or in the case of Dorsey, pumping Bitcoin – without building open systems into their own products at Facebook and Twitter.

More from PaymentsSource

Amazon retiring its plastic Dash buttons
Amazon is focusing more on the virtual and voice-powered reordering on its sites and apps, and as a result is no longer producing new plastic Dash buttons.

Revolut's compliance predicament is a speeding warning to other fintechs
Revolut has caught the attention of U.K. regulators over money laundering compliance, a predicament that sheds light on issues faced by the entire digital financial services industry.

Protecting new currency from old-school market manipulation
Crypto exchanges are adopting anti-fraud surveillance tools as they attempt to root out pump-and-dump schemes, insider trading and bogus orders.

U.K. farm payments, now at a crawl, would sprint under ag bill
With Brexit on the horizon, the U.K.’s new agriculture bill is expected to drastically change the payments landscape for U.K. farmers — most notably through a new payments scheme known as the Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS).