Electronic Value Exchange
Chapters (10)
This chapter establishes a context for the history presented throughout the rest of the book. It describes the formation of
the Federal Reserve’s check clearing system in the United States; the early charge card programs operated by Western Union,
the oil industry, the airlines and the department stores; the various travel and entertainment cards of the 1950s; and the
early bank-issued credit cards, especially the BankAmericard from Bank of America. It ends with the creation of the first
national interchange networks: the Interbank system; and the BankAmericard licensing system.
This chapter describes the formation of the cooperative member association that would eventually be known as Visa. I first
analyze the BankAmericard licensing system of the late 1960s, arguing that its problems could not have been solved solely
by the application of new technology, as it was also suffering from serious organizational issues. I then introduce Visa’s
founder, Dee Ward Hock, and describe how his own personal philosophy shaped the design of the new organization. Finally, I
recount the formation of the new organization, which was initially known as National BankAmericard Incorporated (NBI).
This chapter describes how Hock and his staff crafted a few key social dynamics at three levels of the system: the central
organization’s staff; the overall NBI association; and the cardholding public. I introduce a number of key employees who appear
throughout the narrative, analyze the role of the operating regulations, and discuss NBI’s early national advertising campaigns.
This chapter describes the creation of NBI’s first electronic authorization system, known as BASE. It recounts the various
ways that banks sought to automate local authorizations, how Omniswitch demonstrated that interchange authorizations could
be switched between local centers, and the efforts to create a single shared national authorization system for all the different
charge and credit cards. This effort was ultimately abandoned and I end by describing the design and construction of NBI’s
own system, which went into production in April of 1973.
This chapter describes how NBI solved the other half of their operational problems: clearing and settlement. It describes
the creation of BASE II in 1974, the first electronic clearinghouse for bank-issued payment cards. It also covers the failed
attempt to create a software package for the member banks, known as BASE III.
This chapter examines the various ways in which the system was expanded throughout the rest of the 1970s. The expansions were
both organizational and technological, and I argue that the two must be kept in a dynamic tension in order to understand this
period fully. Organizational topics include the formation of the international organization; anti-trust battles and the institution
of “duality”; and the adoption of the name “Visa.” Technological topics include the expansion of BASE I’s capacity by switching
to the Airline Control Program (ACP) on IBM hardware and creating a second cooperative data center; the expansion of the authorization
network internationally; and multi-currency clearing and settlement.
This chapter recounts how NBI fully automated the point of sale. I introduce Hock’s broader vision for electronic value exchange,
discuss the debates surrounding how to make the cards machine-readable, and Visa’s role in encouraging the development and
widespread adoption of low-cost, dialup, point-of-sale terminals.
This chapter chronicles the history of Visa’s signature debit card, placing it in the context of the discussion surrounding
electronic funds transfer (EFT) in the 1970s. Visa’s first debit card was introduced in 1975, yet the member banks did not
widely issue it until the 1990s. I argue that this had more to do with a technological and cooperative mismatch between Visa’s
debit card and the various EFT plans being formulated by the member banks than it did with protecting lucrative credit card
profits.
This chapter describes other conflicts between Hock and the member banks over what role the central organization should play.
I argue that this role had to be “worked out” as the system grew and evolved. Most of the members assumed that the central
organization existed solely to coordinate their credit card programs, but several events caused them to question whether Visa
was now acting more like their competitor than their coordinator. Topics covered include the Visa travelers cheque program,
the direct signing of the national retailer JC Penny by Visa USA, and other signs that the membership interpreted as empire
building. As Hock and the members continued to struggle over their respective roles, tensions increased, Hock’s power of persuasion
began to fade, and he was ultimately forced out of the organization in 1984.
In this final chapter, I summarize the narrative, discuss ways in which the case informs two grand themes from the history
of technology, and offer two new dynamics that I believe may apply to the study of other payment systems or transactional
networks in general.
... This account suffers from the same limitations. In what follows, I reconstruct the history of payment surveillance in the United States from trade publications, news reports, congressional testimony, and a small number of secondary sources, including Stearns's (2011) indispensable history of Visa. By relying on industry accounts, the present study no doubt over-samples success stories and the aspirations of business executives. ...
... Shortly after World War I, mass retailers began to issue identification tokens to their credit customers. The earliest known examples are coin-sized metal fobs imprinted with the store's name and an account number (Mandell, 1990;Stearns, 2011). These tokens served a double purpose. ...
... During the late 1920s, a new payment card technology, the Charga-Plate, brought identification and recordkeeping together. The system, developed by the Boston-based Farrington Manufacturing Company, consisted of a metal plate embossed with the customer's name, address, and account number (Hyman, 2011;Mandell, 1990;Stearns, 2011). The rectangular plates were similar to those used in office addressing machines, which likely inspired its double function as a form of identification and a duplicating device. ...
Modern payment cards encompass a bewildering array of consumer technologies, from credit and debit cards to stored-value and loyalty cards. But what unites all of these financial media is their connection to recordkeeping systems. Each swipe sends data hurtling through invisible infrastructures to verify accounts, record purchase details, exchange funds, and update balances. With payment cards, banks and merchants have been able to amass vast archives of transactional data. This information is a valuable asset in itself. It can be used for in-house data analytics programs or sold as marketing intelligence to third parties. This research examines the development of payment cards in the United States from the late 19th century to present, drawing attention to their fundamental relationship to identification, recordkeeping, and data mining. The history of payment cards, I argue, is not just a history of financial innovation and computing; it is also a history of Big Data and consumer surveillance. This history, moreover, provides insight into the growth of transactional data and the datafication of money in the digital economy.
... But at the same time, regulation curtailed diversification of products and geography (limiting the service banks could provide their customers). These regulatory restrictions help to explain ongoing experiments with a number of devices which involved a significant degree of consumer interaction including credit cards (Stearns, 2011), the use of pneumatic tubes and CCTV in drive through lanes, home banking, and Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), which despite being first introduced in the late 1960s and early 1970s, would ultimately not gain acceptance until the early 1980s (Bátiz-Lazo, 2018). ...
... Amongst the alternative solutions that were trialled by banks and retailers, there were a number of successes, such as ATMs (Bátiz-Lazo, 2018) and credit cards (Ritzer, 2001;Stearns, 2011). Both bankers and retailers were quick to see a potential connection between the machine-readable cards and the rapid spread of new bank-issued credit cards under the new Interbank Association (i.e., the genesis of Mastercard) and the Bankamericard licensing system (i.e., the genesis of Visa), both of which began in 1966, just as the vision of the cashless society was winning acceptance. ...
... But at the same time, regulation curtailed diversification of products and geography (limiting the service banks could provide their customers). These regulatory restrictions help to explain ongoing experiments with a number of devices which involved a significant degree of consumer interaction including credit cards (Stearns, 2011), the use of pneumatic tubes and CCTV in drive through lanes, home banking, and Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), which despite being first introduced in the late 1960s and early 1970s, would ultimately not gain acceptance until the early 1980s (Bátiz-Lazo, 2018). ...
... Amongst the alternative solutions that were trialled by banks and retailers, there were a number of successes, such as ATMs (Bátiz-Lazo, 2018) and credit cards (Ritzer, 2001;Stearns, 2011). Both bankers and retailers were quick to see a potential connection between the machine-readable cards and the rapid spread of new bank-issued credit cards under the new Interbank Association (i.e., the genesis of Mastercard) and the Bankamericard licensing system (i.e., the genesis of Visa), both of which began in 1966, just as the vision of the cashless society was winning acceptance. ...
In this article we describe the trials and tribulations in the early stages to introduce cashless retail payments in the USA. We compare efforts by financial service firms and retailers. We then document the ephemeral life of one of these innovations, colloquially known as "Hinky Dinky". We conclude with a brief reflection on the lessons these historical developments offer to the future of digital payments.
... These processes were updated with the introduction of credit cards issued by nonbanking companies, which were initially issued as charga-plate cards and later equipped with magnetic stripes, eventually evolving into the modern credit card (Evans and Schmalensee, 2005;Mandell, 1990;Stearns, 2011). This not only altered the technology and infrastructure required to make a payment with a monthly credit line. ...
Research on the digital economy has highlighted the assetization of data. This article argues for expanding existing research on data and datafication processes by focusing on how relationships are made and unmade through and from data. We introduce a general analytic model of “relationing” and show how relationships between users, companies, and products are created in three different moments—entanglement, dissection, and matching—first in the digital economy, then in physical stores. We show how payments with mobile phones connect the digital to the brick-and-mortar economy. Applying our model, we illustrate how a mobile phone's various data streams, money's record-keeping function, and retailers’ loyalty programs produce qualitatively and quantitatively new relations between customers, retailers, banks, app providers, and payment intermediaries. We argue that “relational embedding” captures the inherent relationality between users, their data points, and other economic actors: algorithmically relating users’ data profiles to other users’ profiles yields personalized recommendations, ads, or rebates, continuing the relationship between retailers and customers.
... Unsurprisingly, there are restrictions on full SWIFT membership and access, given that banking itself functions as a club, with restricted access: state-imposed entry requirements guard the reputation and trust in members, and regulations guide behaviour in a way that benefits all members (Goodhart, 1988). However, at times, powerful members defend existing club boundaries to preserve advantages they enjoy (Stearns, 2011). SWIFT's original member banks were not always keen on allowing new kinds of members to join. ...
Money and finance are a socio-economic infrastructure to which trust is integral. The account money form consists of distinct value and information components. The separate transmission of transaction information has enabled the expansion of trust in money across space. While most financial infrastructures store and transfer value, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is a critical infrastructure for infrastructures that transfers information about value as financial messages between banks and infrastructures internationally. The SWIFT financial messaging infrastructure is embedded in the organization of the same name, which is a cooperative, co-owned by member banks. SWIFT’s role as a community of practice, and features of shared infrastructure ownership, exclusivity, and cooperative governance, make it a club for banks. The club is a powerful means of engendering trust among competitor banks, allowing them to exercise joint strategic agency to maintain oligopolistic dominance. SWIFT’s predominance is tested by geopolitical and technological forces. This chapter analyses changes in response to mainly techno-organisational challenges.
... However, different application scenarios demand diverse performance requirements from blockchain systems. For instance, the VISA payment system caters to millions of users with a peak transaction processing capacity of 65000TPS [3], while stock trading necessitates fast transaction confirmation within 0.5s [4]. Despite the continuous emergence of new blockchain systems, they inherently possess distinct features in access rules, consensus mechanisms, contract languages, and execution engines heterogeneously. ...
Multi-dimensional performance evaluation is crucial for blockchain systems as it enables appropriate blockchain choosing for a given scenario and helps to pinpoint the bottleneck module of a blockchain system to optimize its performance. However, the existing evaluation frameworks for blockchain suffer from low system generality, inefficient workload execution, and incomprehensible evaluation metrics. In order to overcome their limitations, we design and implement the Generalized and Fine-grained Blockchain Evaluation (GFBE) framework. Specifically, we abstract 3 types of Universal Evaluation Interface (UEI) via the dynamic proxying approach to enable generalized evaluation of heterogeneous blockchain systems. Through the design of Lua-based workloads plugin with high flexibility and reusability, GFBE improves the efficiency of workload execution. To achieve comprehensive measurement, we define 15 key performance metrics across hierarchical layers of blockchain architecture. We also implement and deploy GFBE on 16 machines each with 8 CPUs and 16GB RAM, and evaluate three open-source blockchain systems namely Ethereum, ChainMaker, and Haihe smart chain. The experimental results demonstrate that GFBE efficiently and accurately measure 15 key performance metrics such as Contract Execution Efficiency at the contract layer, Consensus Agreement Time Ratio at the consensus layer, and State Query Time at the data layer. Compared with state-of-the-art frameworks such as BLOCKBENCH, Log-based, and Caliper, GFBE distinguishes itself as the only framework that encompasses the appealing features of universal interface, reusable workload, and all-layer metrics.
... While the latter tend to have high volume but fewer transactions, the opposite is true for payments, where we see low volume but many transactions. This results in a situation in which the infrastructural costs for establishing and maintaining a working payment infrastructure are very high, creating entry barriers and leading to strong concentration tendencies (Evans and Schmalensee 2004;Stearns 2011). However, the recent success of a few private companies that make extraordinary profits is the result not only of the specific structure of the payment industry. ...
The replacement of cash by cashless alternatives carries huge potential to aggravate social inequality. Governments struggle to manage these dynamics since they must keep a delicate balance between the formation of strong players and the provision of inclusive payment options. Studying the political economy behind the payment industry is crucial to understanding how digitalization has transformed payments. To this aim, we look at the history of the payment industry in two cases: the USA and the euro area. In the USA, the cashless revolution gave rise to an oligopoly of two extremely successful credit card companies, which, however, resulted in a banking system that does not serve the needs of at least one-fifth of the population. In the euro area, the population has access to affordable financial services; however, neither the private nor the public sector has been able to provide the infrastructure to integrate European payments.
... Despite the mounting efforts by the doubters, pessimists, doomsayers, skeptics, short-sighted and blindfolded government officials who are waiting on the constant lookout to put another nail in the digital money (cryptocurrency) coffin, money is destined to become digital, aka virtual (Kobrin, 1997;Lietaer, 2001;Solomon, 1997;Weatherford, 1997;Wray, 1999). While a number of governments are exploring the need for central bank digital currencies (CBDC), the United States is shockingly at least a decade behind in this new digital currency space which could easily turn into "the currency cold war" (Birch, 2020) Even though money's natural evolution towards plastic and credit money 43 originated in the United States in the early 1900s (Stearns, 2011;Thomes, 2011), it is disquietingly upsetting that at this point in the digital money race, the Fed and some research analysts are still asking the question whether or 39 The first known form of currency (the shekel) was created by the Mesopotamian people circa 5,000 years ago. not the Federal Reserve should create a digital dollar -often referred to as "Fedcoin". ...
In the pre-democracy world, people living in monarchies chanted "long live the king!" as they saluted the monarch (the existing or the new). Now the U.S. government is chanting "long live the dollar!" but the voices of its biggest supporters like-minded allies are more tranquil than traditionally observed. Former president Trump's "America First" agenda underpinned by frequent policy shifts and threats (political bullying) to withdraw from multilateral international treaties has even angered longtime allies and led to a surge in global financial instability. in recent years, the U.S. government's abuse of sanction power, weaponization of the dollar as a foreign and security policy, military interventions (aggressor) have prompted a renewed interest in search for a viable alternative to the dollar, whose dilemma (i.e. inflationary "exorbitant privilege") has made the global financial system more unstable than ever before. As observed from recent events, the United States is both willing and very capable of taking unimaginable measures to defend American imperialism (primacy) and the dollar monetary hegemony at all costs. A similar message was also tweeted by former president Trump, "We have only one real currency in the USA, and it is stronger than ever, both dependable and reliable. It is by far the most dominant currency anywhere in the world, and it will always stay that way. It is called the United States Dollar!" The US elections and the victor Trump administration in December 2016 marked the beginning of a new world order (more barbaric) with deliberate and specific actions to slow down or stop China's accelerated progress economically and militarily. However, economists, historians, and scholars strongly warn that the grand strategy of the United States could be self-defeating due to its deeper engagement in the Russo-Ukraine War. This paper's main conclusion is that the current dollar-dominated global financial system must be reformed immediately to avoid the deadliest viruses and the severest economic and financial crises in the future; in line, supranational currency-possible trinity is the only path to world peace and sustainable global financial stability.
... España está integrada en el área de la Unión Europea. Para más detalles véaseStearns (2011). chos países, en los que las tarjetas privadas tienen gran importancia. ...
... Karma appears to offer a system of graduated membership, like a discount card with different tiers increasing the reward and incentivizing loyalty, while adding capital to the whole Neocracy system (see Stearns 2011 for an exploration of such cards). It is slightly unclear which actions will earn karma, how much and what that karma will bring. ...
Methodological utopianism is used to explore the potential of money via two examples, making use of simulacrum case study research. These examples are the Banjar, a traditional Balinese governance and currency system; and the Neocracy, a real cryptocurrency system. Both are considered through an integralist positioning with implications for practical utopianism and economic evaluation of community currency systems. Backgrounds on utopian studies, and money are given for contextualiza-tion of our approach. We take a heterodox economic position and use the "archaeological" approach of utopian thought. The simulacrum case study is introduced as a tool to foster political imagination about possible monetary systems. While the Banjar system is embedded in the local cultural milieu, anthropological learning about existing money systems stimulates the skill to see possibilities here. The Neocracy is utopian in its aims and needs to be proved in praxis with more detailed aspects of implementation being unclear at present. Yet within it we do see a utopian potential which may be realised.
... Money's persistent evolution towards cashless and cryptocurrency began with a transition from cash to both plastic and credit money which emerged in the United States in the early 1900s. Credit card predecessors included credit accounts for trusted customers (1800s), store credit cards by Mobil oil (1958( , it was renamed Visa in 1976, and Mastercard 12 in 1966 (Stearns, 2011;Thomes, 2011 Source: 2020 Nilson Report; https://nilsonreport.com/publication_chart_and_graphs_archive.php Figure 1: U.S. general purpose volume and brands to exceed $1 trillion by 2023 ( Figure 2); Cash still remains as the payment method of choice in Japan and many EU states (Figure 3), but its reign ("cash is king") has been diminishing as smartphone penetration and decentralized payment systems have propelled non-cash transaction growth. ...
Over a decade has passed since a mysterious creator under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto (a pseudonym) launched Bitcoin in January 2009, who designed it as a decentralized (permissionless) purely peer-to-peer network of electronic cash that runs on blockchain using cryptography and distributed ledger technology. Although money's evolution into digital form (account-based and token-based) began several decades ago, it became a reality with Bitcoin and accelerated with stablecoins which have spurred central banks throughout the world to conduct theoretical and conceptual research into CBDC which is considered to be one of the most significant innovations in decades. However, central banks have serious concerns whether cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and central bank backed digital currencies can or will co-exist alongside fiduciary (fiat) currencies. Even though paper money-based payment systems still continue to play important roles, the digitalization of money as CBDCs could potentially dethrone cash's centuries-long reign in near future. Different central banks are moving at substantially varied speeds; while China as a major economy is at the forefront of paper money's transition into digital form, the U.S. and the UK are proceeding rather cautiously; on that note, Philadelphia Federal Reserve President Patrick Harker contends that the U.S. should rush to issue a CBDC just because China is rolling out its digital yuan. The most dominant Fed and the Bank of England argue that CBDCs should only be launched when benefits (i.e. reduced transaction cost, better track of money movement, and tighter control of tax evasion and financial crime) outweigh costs, in other words, a CBDC should be "minimally invasive". Most central banks in advanced nations and EMEs emphasize that CBDCs should replicate properties of the current two-tier monetary system (wholesale and retail) which is based on physical cash and private intermediation, but they also caution that CBDC research is in early stages with a wide variety of unanswered technological and design challenges (i.e. central banks lack technological expertise) as well as potential risks such as run on deposits, anonymity (data privacy), and elimination of private commercial bank (i.e. trusted third party) intermediation involving deposits and loan generation, payments, and ATMs (the need for ATMs and bank branches has decreased significantly since the outbreak of COVID-19).
... Like money (Luhmann 1982), credit cards bridge present and future economic activities, but also, like a very effi cient survey, they collect and archive information of every single purchase. In the language of recent "social studies of fi nance," cards are "market devices" (Muniesa et al. 2007), objects located in complex sociotechnical assemblages where transactional data and more or less sophisticated risk-scoring mechanisms play an important role in screening, pricing, and targeting loans (Leyshon and Thrift 1999;Poon 2011;Stearns 2011). ...
The financial sector has seen a trend toward more decentralization, especially led by the introduction and prevalence of blockchain. However, decentralization technologies may increase energy consumption through the use of potentially less optimized hardware, replication, and consensus-related operations, as well as further cryptographic overhead when involving privacy enhancing technologies (privacy-enhancing technologys (PETs)). Blockchain technology is usually at the center of criticism related to electricity consumption, manifesting in sensationalized headlines such as “Bitcoin [or blockchain] uses more electricity than country X.” In this chapter, we focus on important distinctions that need to be made when analyzing the electricity consumption of a blockchain. We show that while for proof of work (PoW) blockchains, electricity consumption is an inherent feature and may justify such headlines; the energy intensity of blockchains with other consensus mechanisms is multiple orders of magnitude lower. We also argue that for these blockchains non-PoW blockchains and decentralized systems in general, a trade-off between the security achieved through decentralization and energy consumption exists, as the additional electricity consumption compared to centralized systems can mainly be attributed to redundant computations introduced by decentralization. Lastly, we discuss different approaches to managing the tension between decentralization and electricity consumption.
The most exciting national banking champion of the 20th century might have been Citibank. Originally being a kind of private New York central bank and investment bank in one, the Bank grew its business both abroad and in terms of products, being limited by restrictive U.S. regulation from the 1930s, but readily finding ways to work with it creatively and pressing for its release, while at the same time serving interests of ‘America Inc’. A merger with Travelers Group, announced in 1998, appeared to be a too big step and was partially unwound already before the Global Financial Crisis hit the banking world, making ‘Citi’ even smaller. As to striking persons in the Citibank history, the names of the visionary Walter Wriston, the operations and consumer-interested John Reed and finally the aggressive dealmaker Stanford Weil come to the fore.
In digital cultures, practices of registering, identifying, and classifying can hardly be separated any longer. This text addresses the genealogy of ever more infrastructural practices and controversial technologies of identification. It provides a media history of identifying with passports and credit cards. Identification, as I understand it, is a co-operative media and data practice that always relies on more than one person. It involves human bodies and their semiotic resources right from the start and attaches them to bureaucratic systems of inscription. This includes digital identification procedures that integrate face and fingerprint recognition. Biometry thus attempts to overcome the constitutive identificatory gap between accounts, bodies, and persons.
Zusammenfassung
Der Beitrag behandelt anhand der Bestände des Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchivs in Wien die verschiedensten Ausformungen von Protokollen im klassischen Archivzusammenhang. Neben einer versuchten Übersicht über die im Archiv vorkommenden Protokollausprägungen wird kurz versucht einen Weg zur zeitgenmäßen Nutzung dieser oftmals nur schwer handhabbaren Quellengattung aufzuzeigen. The article deals with the various forms of protocols in the classical archive context on the basis of the holdings of the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv in Vienna. In addition to an attempted overview of the types of minutes found in the archives, a brief attempt is made to show a way of using this often difficult-to-handle source genre in a contemporary manner.
Zusammenfassung
Ausgehend von neueren Initiativen zur digitalen Bildauthentifizierung wie dem News Provenance Project geht der Beitrag der Rolle von Protokollen bei der Stabilisierung bildlicher Referenz nach. Im Rückblick auf die Geschichte der Instrumentalisierung technischer Bilder zeigt sich: Wo immer Bilder zu stabilen und belastbaren Informationsträgern in arbeitsteiligen Abläufen und weitläufigen Netzwerken werden sollen, schreiben standardisierte und standardisierende Protokolle der Bildlogistik vor, wie mit technischen Bildaufzeichnungen zu verfahren ist, und erlauben zugleich die Aufzeichnung der Bedingungen, unter denen Bilder hergestellt, distribuiert und mit Informationen angereichert werden. In dieser Hinsicht gibt es keinen Bruch zwischen analoger und digitaler Bildpraxis: Stabile bildliche Referenz hing immer schon an Protokollen der Stabilisierung. Allerdings, so die These des Beitrags, findet derzeit mit digitalen Aufzeichnungstechniken und sozialen Netzwerken der Bilddistribution eine radikale Ausweitung des Feldes des Protokollierbaren statt: Wo es möglich wird, die gesamte content journey , »everything that happens to a photo«, automatisiert zu registrieren und dauerhaft zu speichern, wird bildlogistische Protokollierung zum unabschließbaren Prozess. Damit verschiebt sich auch der Einsatz bildlogistischer Protokolle von der Standardisierung der Produktionsbedingungen zur Regulierung der Distribution, und von der Dokumentation einmaliger Aufzeichnungsakte zur sequenziellen Registrierung von Transaktionen.
Zusammenfassung
Der Beitrag folgt protokollarischen Schreibpraktiken, die zur Ausbildung der nordamerikanischen Kultur des Kreditgebens beigetragen haben. Er rekonstruiert die institutionelle und medienpraktische Entstehung des credit report im 19. Jahrhundert. Auf dessen narrativen und klassifizierenden Bewertungen von Kreditwürdigkeit beruht, so die These, die Konjunktur des prestigeträchtigen Bezahlens mit Kreditkarten im 20. Jahrhundert. Die protokollierenden Praktiken – in der Kreditauskunft, aber auch in der Registratur von Transaktionen – führen darin zur Ausbildung von fixierenden Karten- und Datenformaten und Standardisierungen. Diese werden wiederum für die Finanzmedieninteraktion protokollarisch, d.h. vorschreibend wirksam.
Penelitian ini dilatar belakangi oleh suatu pemikiran bahwa organisasi harus memperhatikan efektifitas penerimaan kas untuk menunjang kinerja organisasi dalam menjalankan usahanya yang dipengaruhi oleh system pembayaran dan penyelesaian pembayaran. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui Pengaruh Penggunaan Sistem E-Payment (E-Toll) Dan Penyelesaian Pembayaran (Settlement) Terhadap Efektivitas Penerimaan Kas Pada PT Jasa Marga (Persero) Tbk. Ruas Jakarta-Cikampek.
Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah kuantitatif. Teknik sampling menggunakan sampel jenuh dengan total 59 data penggunaan e-toll, data rekening koran, dan data transaksi PT Jasa Marga (Persero) Tbk. Ruas Jakarta-Cikampek. Teknik analisis data menggunakan uji regresi linier berganda dengan bantuan software SPSS versi 26. Secara umum hasil analisis menunjukkan bahwa Penggunaan Sistem E-Payment (E-Toll), Penyelesaian Pembayaran memiliki pengaruh positif, signifikan dan bersama-sama terhadap Efektivitas Penerimaan Kas pada PT Jasa Marga (Persero) Tbk. Ruas Jakarta-Cikampek.
Despite the narrative of a globalized economy, there is no effectively working global payment system. Although there is an infrastructure that allows the transmission of data about global payments, the movement of actual money is executed indirectly, making it an incalculable endeavor. The reason is that money is not simply data, but a complex bundle of rights closely tied to the nation state. In the absence of infrastructure that reliably links payments with guarantees of the nation state, intermediaries that facilitate global payments are forced to create trust in a different way. This is only possible by occupying a highly centralized and therefore powerful position. In this article, we investigate which actors were historically able to hold such a position and how these actors are challenged by digitalization. We suggest that there are three models of payment infrastructure provision. Bank-based systems were dominant until the 1980s, but in the following decades, a second model emerged: the provision of financial infrastructure by global companies. Since the early 2000s, we see a third model: the entrance of tech-driven companies in the payment sector. We conclude that digital technologies will not necessarily solve the problems, but might in fact exacerbate them.
This article introduces a new social scientific understanding of the relationship between households and finance. We call it financial oikonomization. Financial oikonomization signals a specific research problem and a distinctive analytical approach to this problem. The problem is how households are financially administered and governed. The approach is pragmatist and descriptive. It is oriented to the how, to the study of the problems and practices of those directly involved with administrating and governing households’ financial flows. On the basis of an extensive review of recent research, we distinguish seven operations of financial oikonomization, seven distinct problems—with their own practices, sites and techniques, but all oriented to the financial administration and government of households. We call these operations: budgeting, juggling, evaluating, attaching, educating, publicizing and infrastructuring.
Speculative economic, financial, and cryptocurrency bubbles are not arcane anymore; nonetheless, they are still misunderstood. For this exact reason, they continue to form even centuries after the famous first speculative bubbles of 17 th and 18 th centuries. Bubbles do not form instantaneously; quite the opposite, they progress through several distinct stages that can be monitored and studied in order to take proper policy actions to avoid costly crises. Speculation, as an economic cycle, fuels investment activity; therefore, it is not entirely bad unless it is done excessively via manipulative actions which ultimately cause panic among investors. Speculation alone does not result in a crash, but the induced fear spiraling through the broader economy like the venom of a poisonous snake can be enough to rattle markets and cause bubbles to burst. Exactly what happened in the famous first three bubbles; the Dutch Tulipmania (1634-38), the Mississippi Bubble (1719-20), and the South Sea Bubble (1720). We all know that history repeats itself; every time it does, the damage is far greater than before. Three centuries after the famous first bubbles, the 21 st century began with its own famous three bubbles; the Internet Bubble (the dot.com crisis of 2002), the U.S. Housing Bubble (the subprime crisis of 2006-07 followed by the 2008 global financial crisis), and the Cryptocurrency Bubble (Bitcoinmania).
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in two important outcomes; first, centuries of developments and progress in technology, medicine, and science failed to combat the virus which has so far killed over 1.6 million people worldwide; second, and most importantly, the new vital role of ecommerce increased chances of survival under self-quarantine or imposed lockdowns. A cashless society can bring advantages and disadvantages; for example, ecommerce can reduce or eliminate costs associated with conducting business (i.e. job creation, accounts payable/receivable, scope of products and services) and shopping online. Cashless payments as part of ecommerce not only can increase flexibility and convenience, but it can reduce financial exclusion through web-enabled and mobile applications; this way, a majority of the world's 2.5 billion unbanked people could gain an access to the opportunity of conducting peer-to-peer transactions, sending and receiving money, and purchasing items in online stores that are open for business 24/7. The current acute health crisis has highlighted the crucial aspect of ecommerce and cashless payments, the comfort and convenience of which has allowed consumers to use the saved time to participate in other value-added activities. I do not want to even imagine what would have happened if there were no digital technologies during the global lockdown, I guess quarantined people would have no choice but to die either from the virus itself or by starvation as they would be unable to order food, medicine and other essential items.
In this article, I trace how payment and money transfer systems in Cuba have expanded from underground courier services to digital platforms such as Airbnb and Bitcoin wallets. I focus here on payments being halted and deferred because of U.S. embargo restrictions that prevent correspondent relationships with Cuban retail banks and constantly flag transactions initiated in Cuba. Cubans and visitors to Cuba operating on these digital platforms are therefore exposed to new risks and forms of precarity. In the absence of a robust payment infrastructure, electronic transactions between the two countries have to be propped up and secured by networks of cash circulation. A social infrastructure of trust and informal networks emerges through which digital payment rails get repurposed to settle accounts, particularly when electronic payments get detained. This complicates the premise that cashless futures make payments more inclusive, efficient, secure, or in some cases decentralized, by showing how the histories of U.S. sanctions impede and cripple the ways electronic payment infrastructures work in practice, creating forms of exclusion for those located in “prohibited” regions of the globe.
This article examines the work of the National Commission of Electronic Fund Transfers to understand the emergence of electronic banking in 1970s US. Reviewing reports and papers prepared by the Commission and analyzing them in light of an influx of letters it received from the general public, this article explores how public interests were defined in debates over electronic banking, providing perspectives from both consumers and policymakers. Building on literature on the binding of collectives in relation to and through information technologies, including payment technologies, I demonstrate how certain visions of the public are formed to cohere with economic and technological desirable futures. I argue that the Commission reworked a number of public concernsabout automation, loss of privacy to the databank, and the checkless societyinto technical matters, resulting in a new vision of the public interest in a time of electronic connectivity.
Databank Systems was set up in 1967 by a consortium of New Zealand banks to share computing services. This was the first instance of computers being used to integrate the ledger accounts of all trading banks within a country, an innovation facilitated by the relatively small size of the country, the rising use of cheque facilities and the realisation that a joint effort would provide a more efficient service by enabling the pooling of resources to achieve scale form expensive computing technology. In 1972, Databank introduced time slicing, allowing non-bank customers to use spare capacity on the Databank system. This use of Databank outside the banking systems was controversial and the management of Databank was increasingly at odds with the Bankers Association. This article uses the example of Databank to address the tensions between consortium computing and the sale of spare time resources in banking.
Im August 1983 erreichte die Deutsche Bank eine außergewöhnliche, diplomatisch riskante, fast schon unanständig zu nennende Einladung. In einem an Eckart van Hooven – Zuständiger für das Privatkundengeschäft der Deutschen Bank – gerichteten Brief sprach Dee Hock, seinerseits CEO von Visa, eine Einladung zum kommenden Visa-Mitgliedskongress in Kyoto aus. Hock lud sowohl van Hooven wie seine Frau als Ehrengäste nach Japan ein.
This essay explores the organisational character of Facebook's Libra currency by undertaking a critical reading of documents published by the Libra Association. Drawing on the conceptual work of Marilyn Strathern and Michel Serres, it illustrates how ownership cuts the network and encourages parasitism as a means of driving future profit. Central to this is the claim that Libra is not an exercise in democratising money, but rather, the opposite: Libra is run as a club, for the benefit of club members. The conceptual theme of 'cutting' is used to organise the argument. Rather than a cutting-edge technology, Libra's true innovation is organisational and consists in overturning the decentralised character of blockchain, such that distributed ledger technology is re-centralised by big tech firms. Outsiders are thus cutoff from Libra; only those inside the club have the right to participate in Libra and its governance. This position also affords members an exclusive capacity to take a cut of the profits generated through Libra. As a private organisation, members have sole rights to future profits generated from the Libra ecosystem and are in this way incentivised to create new product opportunities over time.
This article has a twofold ambition. First, exploring the peculiar Swedish case, it contributes to the international history of credit cards dominated by the American narrative. Early adaptation of new banking technologies was in Sweden combined with negative general attitudes towards consumer credit. Although introduced early in a European comparison, credit cards needed to be reconceptualised, reshaped, and renamed to be accepted. Second, the paper’s contribution to the study of financial products and their intertwining with values, affects, and the rhythm of the everyday is that it reveals the role of de-vicing which refers to the strategies conducted by card issuers while dealing with the moral resistance. Marketers exploited the non-credit properties of the card in order to spread its use into the everyday practices of consumers. The card itself was turned into a device for de-vicing – destigmatising – consumer credit. By looking at the technical and cultural arrangements built into the card, I unpack the workings of two de-vicing strategies that reconfigured cards (1) as modern money and (2) as membership/identity cards. The Swedish example reveals how plastic cards were reshaped in the forcefield between money and identity and became instrumental in reorganising moralities of debt.
The global financial landscape was experiencing a shift, albeit subtle. While cash and traditional banking systems were still firmly entrenched in most societies, the early stirrings of a digital revolution were beginning to take shape. The idea of digital money, especially the notion of cryptocurrencies, was only just beginning to emerge on the horizon, but it would go on to challenge the very foundation of how we think about and use money accessed.
Money is an ‘instrument of collective memory’ before it is a means of exchange, a unit of account or a store of value. Money's status as a memory technology is particularly significant in light of the role that information and communication technologies now play in economic transactions. Many of the new channels and infrastructures for payments, such as magnetic cards, mobile phones, the wired Internet, social media platforms, and RFID technologies, record detailed transactional data alongside a range of other identifying data. We now have extremely detailed records of the many ways that money circulates, is transferred and is spent. This paper concerns this previously latent transactional data and how it is currently recorded, monetised, and used to inform action. What has been recorded in and about money at different moments in time and how are these categories breaking down? Who has access to and ownership over this collectively produced record and how is it driving new data practices and business models based on the monetisation and application of monetary records? And how might re-engaging with money's mnemonic status help to foreground a politics and ethics of transactional data?
This article studies the genesis and early international expansion of the bank-issued credit card—an American innovation that quickly took hold in western Europe. Empirical evidence undermines the proposition of a single firm building a proprietary network. In fact, it was a constellation of participants that combined three characteristics, namely, a critical mass of both retail customers and retail merchants; the capacity to implement new technological solutions; and the ability to forge resilient collaborations across national borders. The evidence supports the value of collaboration in retail financial services as means of appropriating network externalities. Moreover, other conceptual and empirical studies, especially those based on two-sided markets, neglect the greater implications that initial conditions in this industry have on long-term success.
This work is a contribution to the study of the adoption and use of computers in the savings bank industry in western Europe before the arrival of the Internet. It documents the presence of a pan-European network of IT users and analyzes the role of their industry associations in the processes of adopting and disseminating technology. It describes and analyzes their situation as late technology users, indicating certain specific and original patterns in the adoption of computers. Special attention is given to the implementation of shared computer centers throughout Europe and the results in the area of online accounting systems and teleprocessing systems as steps before the development of savings bank electronic funds transfer networks. It documents that in the savings banks industry, a reciprocal influence between technology and its uses was in play over long period of time and throughout the technological changes.
The article intertwines the history of the American credit card, its standardization, and interactional realization with the latest developments in payment systems. Understanding both credit cards and systems like Apple Pay or blockchain-based applications as part of an administrative longue durée, it argues for a different understanding of the Internet of Things. It should be understood both as a technical-informational and as an accounting infrastructure, with tensions arising between both segments.
An exploration of the computer, tracing not only the development of the machine itself, but also chronicling the effects of manufacturing and sales innovations by companies that made the boom possible. © 2016 by Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray. All rights reserved.
This article introduces a novel approach to payment innovations. It t identifies a cross-industry (retail trade and retail banking) and multi-country (USA, some Western European countries and Japan) approach to the interaction between these industries and the new retail payment systems from the 1970s to the mid 1990s. It documents and discusses the different trajectories that have been seen in the different competitive environments, particularly in regard to payment cards. It also analyses the involvement of bankers and retailers in the evolution of card payment systems and their contribution to the global adoption of bank cards. These processes have occurred within a framework in which sectoral boundaries have taken precedence over the payment alternatives associated with cross-industry solutions.
This article explores how 800-service, or toll-free long-distance (In-WATS) lines, became an institutionalized part of direct marketing in the United States between the mid-1960s and early 1980s. Introduced by AT&T in 1967, 800-service attracted immediate attention in mail-order circles, where marketers saw it as means of automating long-distance selling and catering to an increasingly decentralized and credit-dependent populace. Although early initiatives, like that of catalog giant Aldens, fell flat, 800-service gained traction by the mid-1970s as a call-center industry developed and mail-order operations began using In-WATS lines in combination with bank-issued credit cards and private delivery services. By decade’s end, this trio of networks—long-distance telephony, credit/payment, and parcel delivery—were densely interwoven, forming the infrastructural basis for a new kind of “anywhere, anytime,” upscale shopping exemplified by the newly refashioned Spiegel. Ultimately, the article helps historicize the rise of electronic retailing and the marketization of telecommunications infrastructure.
Today, nearly the entire adult population in Sweden uses a digital BankID for more purposes than only financial ones. Issuing identity documents is commonly perceived as a task for state authorities, but in Swedish society banks have played a dominant role as identificators. The first contribution of this article is that it explains this unique emergence of bank identity and traces the historical roots of a financial identification society to the mid-1960s. Banks started issuing standardized identity cards as a complement to the new system of paying salaries and wages by direct deposit to checking accounts, and these cards eventually became quasi-official identity documents. The Swedish story thus contrasts the scholarship on identification and state control. By treating identity as both a socio-cultural category and a materialization of a technology of control, I argue that the formalization of official identity documents for everyday use was intertwined with the creation of new financial identities. The introduction and general distribution of ID cards were parts of a process whereby wage earners became financial consumers, and the banks transformed themselves into retail companies. My second contribution therefore relates to the scholarly narrative on the financialization of everyday life since the 1980s. While the mass move to financial identification in Sweden, highlighted in this article, certainly fits the content of this narrative, it questions its chronology.
This study takes a step toward reconceptualizing the process of financialization, the reorientation of the US economy toward financial services that scholars view as a product of the 1970s economic shocks and subsequent regulatory liberalization. Instead, I argue that financialization was equally dependent on the gradual development of new financial technologies and business practices within the political and regulatory environment of the early postwar era. I do so by examining a cohort of small U.S. banks, which in the early 1950s began experimenting with a novel form of consumer credit: the charge account credit service. These plans allowed consumers to shop at a variety of local merchants using a single bank charge card. Bankers, though, developed charge account plans not as a conduit for consumer lending but as a business service, which enabled their small-merchant customers to compete with the credit plans offered by expanding department stores. In this way, charge account banking conformed with the 1950s political economy of finance, in which commercial bankers primarily lent to businesses and were still wary of consumer credit. Although they operated differently than the credit cards consumers know today, charge account banking plans were still a necessary first step toward this later financial technology, paving the way for commercial bankers to invest in unsecured card-based credit in the decades that followed.
Consumer finance markets are being transformed by the increasing mobility of people, products, technology, and information. This presents challenges for understanding changing consumer behaviour and building adaptable business models. Researchers are rising to meet these challenges by adapting their frameworks and methods to take account of mobility's effects. I present three cases of method adaptation to consumer finance research (financial diaries, object‐centred interviews, social network analysis) and discuss their contributions. The complexity and personalisation of consumer finance requires us to not only be more creative with how we approach research, but also more robust in questioning our assumptions, framing appropriate questions, and designing research that draws frameworks and methods from multiple disciplines.
One can only understand and apply all these new innovations by playing close to the ball and understanding customers’ needs and expectations. It is no longer possible to say what the world is going to look like five years from now. In the past, bankers were ‘scenario thinkers,’ who ran the bank by making strategic choices far in advance. Today, we have to grant more space to short‐cycle thinking and optionality. (Alexander Zwart, Senior Product Manager at Rabobank, quoted in Ifrim, Mual and Innopay 2017)
The payments industry – the business of transferring value through public and corporate infrastructures – is undergoing rapid transformation. New business models and regulatory environments disrupt more traditional fee-based strategies, and new entrants seek to displace legacy players by leveraging new mobile platforms and new sources of data. In this increasingly diversified industry landscape, start-ups and established players are attempting to embed payment in ‘social’ experience through novel technologies of accounting for trust. This imagination of the social, however, is being materialized in gated platforms for payment, accounting, and exchange. This paper explores the ambiguous politics of such experiments, specifically those, like Bitcoin or the on-demand sharing economy, that delineate an economic imaginary of ‘just us’ – a closed and closely guarded community of peers operating under the illusion that there are no mediating institutions undergirding that community. This provokes questions about the intersection of payment and publics. Payment innovators’ attenuated understanding of the social may, we suggest, evacuate the nitty-gritty of politics.
Payments architectures are on the verge of a great bifurcation that must be documented in order to be debated. Google is moving towards a quasi bank while Apple and Google disseminate payment systems over smartphones. At the same time, block chain might become a distributed ledger introducing a radical new model of trusted third-party. The detailed history of credit card systems helps understand why the game of security has always been trigged by a delegation process of the risk to third parties and by the cat-and-mouse game of security and fraud. Technologies were designed to solve these issues but have always been closely related to innovations in institutional assemblages. These payments systems shape our social life and the stakes of trust that we put in these architectures require a truly political examination.
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