
Golden Carrots - oliyoung
https://medium.com/@mpesce/golden-carrots-1b496d032f21
======
jdmichal
> It’s getting hard to remember, but a decade ago — before iPhone — all our
> mobiles were dumbphones. We’d use them to call or text and perhaps play the
> occasional game of snake. But that’s it. That’s all we could do.

Tell that to my HTC Wizard / Cingular 8125 [0], released almost two years
before the iPhone. The term "smartphone" was already in use before the iPhone
also [1]. I don't mean to downplay the arrival of the iPhone; it did a lot to
advance the state of the art. But to say that these things just flat out
didn't exist before the iPhone is grossly wrong.

For those who want to know, this is how history is rewritten.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Wizard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Wizard)

[1] [https://www.engadget.com/2006/02/21/review-
cingular-8125/](https://www.engadget.com/2006/02/21/review-cingular-8125/)

~~~
iaw
They weren't great phones, and the iPhone definitely did a lot to push UI/UX
forward, but the iPhone was most definitely not the first smart phone.

I'd argue that the Blackberry was the first practical smartphone, released in:
2003. I remember being blown away by the Wizard before the iPhone was a rumor.

Edit: Changed year from 1999 to 2003, 1999 was the 2-way pager, 2003 was the
first device that resembled a smartphone.

~~~
stronglikedan
> 2003 was the first device that resembled a smartphone.

I had a Handspring Visor when they were first released (around 2000), and
while it was just a PDA on its own, there was a phone module that slid into
the back, making it a smartphone. After that, I had almost all of the Treo's
starting around 2002, which (what I think) were the first all-in-one
smartphones.

~~~
timthorn
And then there was the Nokia Communicator from 1996.

~~~
vanadium
I was going to bring up the iPaq line of Windows PDAs and phones beginning in
'99, but you already preceded me by 3 years with that Nokia play.

------
Bartweiss
> Kenya began a slow transition to a cashless society — and they did this
> without banks

This is a bit odd. Safaricom _is_ the bank here, inasmuch they track cash
transfers and perform deposits and withdrawals. If you don't trust them,
surely you wouldn't trust this system?

It's certainly an interesting state of affairs, because a one-layer payment
system is quite different from e.g. American infrastructure where a consumer
bank, payment method, and business bank are three different entities. But I
wouldn't call it bank-free in the sense that, say, cryptocurrency advocates
mean.

~~~
dmix
Well if you want to be pedantic about the definitions:

"and they did this without banks" = "and they did this without legacy
incumbent banks (/financial institutions) that previously dominated
traditional banking"

The reason it worked so well in Kenya was because everything didn't have to go
through these legacy organizations. These legacy organizations dominate the
market in each western country and face little competition from upstarts like
Safaricom/Kopo Kopo due to high barriers of entry via regulations (regulations
designed with the mega-banks with teams of lawyers in mind).

I mean why else was a poor country full of dumbphones able to implement a
cashless society in a very short time frame while a rich country full of
powerful smartphones can't even get chip-based debit cards implemented in a
timely fashion?

The reason is none of us entrepreneurs, or the typical SV investors, are in a
rush to do the same here is because of the huge risk involved. The risk being
spending a huge amount of time/resources getting regulatory approval while
simultaneously trying to build a customer base and keep the bills paid.

Even Google/Apple have only put a token investment in getting their payment
systems adopted, they built the client platform and assumed other companies
would jump up to push adoption to the platform ...if only there was some type
of company that had relationships with both SME businesses doing consumer
billing/retail AND had access to client bank accounts and credit cards...hmm
they'd be ideal to do this. Maybe if the banking industry had competition
they'd put this type of effort into their industry and we could have gotten
rid of our wallets full of plastic cards years ago.

------
Animats
The Kenya system is very centralized - there's one big player. It's not hard
to make that work. The question is whether the central operator does a good
job. Remember PayPal's customer service problem.

The Kenya system is expensive to use. Wikipedia says that fees take up 27% of
the funds transferred. That's huge. Almost as high as the Apple Store. Most
transactions are tiny, and the fees add up. This is far more expensive than
credit cards.

The author discusses a W3C scheme where money transfer services become "dumb
money pipes", with the browser in charge. The money transfer services lose the
relationship with the customer; all they do is transfer the money in the
background. This is a good idea which will be hated by money transfer
services.

------
eridius
> _If an Australian company writes an app that allows a purchase to be made —
> and paid for, via the app — it’s more likely than not that Apple or Google
> will appear, asking for a big slice of that sale._

> …

> _All of this is fine if you’re buying an album from iTunes, but what if
> you’re buying a sofa from IKEA?_

Except Apple (and I have to assume Google) very explicitly says that
purchasing real-world goods is not required to go through their IAP and
therefore Apple does not take a cut. This is why you can buy things using the
Amazon app, or call a car using Lyft. Apple only demands a cut for digital
goods.

~~~
benjaminjackman
One area I've noticed the digital-world restriction is in reading sample
chapter(s) in a Kindle book. If you decide to purchase the e-book at after
finishing the sample chapter(s) the Kindle App does not offer a one-click `buy
this book and keep reading` button. Presumably because of Apple's TOS and
restrictions on in-app purchases. Instead the flow is to leave the kindle app,
and find the book on Amazon's website in the browser and then purchase it
there. Then return to the Kindle app refresh it and then switch to the new
book.

~~~
eridius
Yep. That's Amazon's end-run around Apple's IAP requirements.

------
pavel_lishin
> _Let’s say a restaurant booking app wanted to get your a taxi to take you
> door to door — right now that would all happen behind the scenes, because
> that booking app can’t order and pay for that taxi. There’s no API allowing
> these apps to perform transactions._

Do I want that? Do I trust Rstrntr to get me a cab? Which one of my ride-
share/taxi app will it use? Is part of my install process now telling every
app I install which of the other apps on my phone I prefer to use for what?

Maybe that's just a bad example; maybe being able to print a photo from Flickr
by sending it, along with a small payment, to Shutterfly would be cool. But I
also don't want it constantly badgering me for permission, the way some apps
tend to.

~~~
Nullabillity
That sounds like a perfect use for Intents.

~~~
gcb0
which Google crap over all the time.

install another gps app, such as Here. now use any Google app, such as
calendar, search app, etc and click any address. it will open gmaps. always.

this is specially evil for search and voice integration.

~~~
Nullabillity
I just checked, and pressing a location from Google Calendar shows a list of
my map apps. You can also pick your "assistant" app (which, for example,
decides what should happen when you long-press your home button) in the
settings.

------
venantius
A point that is missed by this essay is that in a lot of the west the types of
activities he is describing are, for legal/regulatory reasons, only
permissible by a bank. So while we can have Apple Pay, PayPal, etc., under the
hood those products and companies are still built on top of inter-bank
payments with banks actually holding the cash.

------
diminish
tldr; NPP a mobile payment API inside your smartphone will make it easy to
move cash among apps across phones too.

it's like the 10th thing in mobile payment space so why NPP differs and will
win is not answered in comparison.

you can skip mostly rhetorical, revisionist smartphone history and references
to Kenya/Australia.

~~~
settsu
Except I find I'm biased against an author when they make categorically false
statements that are within the same realm as the primary topic.

 _> It’s getting hard to remember, but a decade ago — before iPhone — all our
mobiles were dumbphones. We’d use them to call or text and perhaps play the
occasional game of snake. But that’s it. That’s all we could do._

That's just simply unture.

Yes, on the one hand, it's a contextually small detail. Unfortunately, on the
other hand, I can't help feel it calls into question the rest of the content
since they couldn't be bothered inform them self on a basis point.

Edit: Blockquote fail

~~~
falsedan
Yes, this article is terrible; it wastes the reader's time with pointless
minutia, uses too much rhetoric, and doesn't get its facts in order.

> _writes for El Reg_

------
chrisfarms
> Why exactly Australians need a peer-to-peer payments system isn’t exactly
> clear...

Probably as the first steps towards removing cash. Cash must be such a pain
for a government, I'm surprised it is still around.

~~~
cyphar
Which is a shame, because of how incredibly authoritarian the tracking of
credit cards is. Credit/debit cards are a proof of ID in Australia (40 points)
and so with every purchase you are uniquely identifying yourself to the
seller.

Unfortunately making cash digital is quite hard (you could argue that zcash
and zcoin will solve this problem but I'm not so sure).

~~~
mod
> Credit/debit cards are a proof of ID in Australia (40 points)

Can you elaborate on that? I'm curious what the points are.

~~~
cyphar
In Australia we have a "points" system for proof-of-ID. In order to get
certain things (open a bank account, get a passport, so on) you need to have a
certain number of "points". Most things require 100 points of ID, and there
are different classes of IDs (passports -- 70, credit card -- 40, water bill
-- 35).

The purpose was to make it harder to commit fraud, though it also makes it
kinda difficult to legitimately bootstrap your ID when you're a minor (or if
you're an immigrant).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_point_check](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_point_check)

[http://www.police.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/133...](http://www.police.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/133193/FACT_SHEET_100_PT_ID.pdf)

~~~
falsedan
> _makes it kinda difficult to legitimately bootstrap your ID when you 're a
> minor (or if you're an immigrant_

Or a slacker: I somehow scraped up 100 points to get a passport, then didn't
have photo ID to collect it from the post office. I had to point to the packet
& say, I need to open the packet to be able to show you the photo ID you need
to see before you can release the packet to me.

------
darkstar999
The article uses "SME" out of nowhere like I know what it means.

~~~
callalex
I'd never seen that either. Given the context I am guessing it is the Aussy
equivalent to the American "SMB" which would mean it is "Small to Medium
Enterprise"

~~~
Danihan
It means "Subject Matter Expert"

~~~
falsedan
"Shaking My Ear"

------
djrogers
Not sure if the author is being intentionally misleading, or if he really
doesn't understand the state of mobile payments today. My guess would be the
first based on the rest of the article.

Take this: "If an Australian company writes an app that allows a purchase to
be made — and paid for, via the app — it’s more likely than not that Apple or
Google will appear, asking for a big slice of that sale." ... "All of this is
fine if you’re buying an album from iTunes, but what if you’re buying a sofa
from IKEA?"

The above clearly implies that Apple / Google are going to charge merchants
their 30% app sale cut on a couch, but that's ridiculous. Ikea can implement
Apple Pay directly in their app and pay a 0% cut to Apple today, without
requiring users to enter their CC details. Heck, you can even build that in to
a website, you don't even need an app. I assume Google's mobile payment stuff
has similar features, if not they'll catch up.

~~~
ChuckMcM

       > The above clearly implies that Apple / Google are
       > going to charge merchants their 30% app sale cut 
       > on a couch, but that's ridiculous. 
    

I'm fairly sure that if either Apple or Google thought they could get away
with a 30% cut on a couch bought at IKEA they would absolutely implement that
"feature."

Both companies continue to make moves to avoid being disintermediated from
cash streams. Nobody wants to be the wire, everyone wants to be the service.

~~~
gcb0
well that's exactly what the kenyan phone agent takes: 27%

this article is a ridiculous eulogy to late stage capitalism. No banks because
privacy laws make it too expensive? just start a bank but call it a mobile
company and you can operate your bank without any regards for affordable fees
and transaction privacy!

------
daurnimator
This is the first I've heard of the new australian "New Payments Platform"
(NPP). Is anyone here working in the space?

~~~
nstj
People have been talking about it for a while, though there hasn't been much
take up from big 4 banks with use cases from what I can see. End of day batch
processing isn't "that" bad so it will be interesting to see if it gets the
kind of legs some people are suggesting.

------
qznc
> It’s my hope that at least one person in the room today gets the opportunity
> that’s opening up here

Is this a transcript of a speech?

------
mchanson
I was hoping it was about some GMO super nutritional carrots. Like Golden
Rice.

~~~
yorwba
Since Golden Rice gets its color from beta-carotene, carrots are already
pretty golden in that sense.

------
evolve2k
> You have seven months until the NPP is released, and all of the
> documentation you need to use to write services that make these APIs
> available to apps has already been released.

Anyone know where to find the API Docs?

------
btbuildem
I wonder whether P2P transactions would ever take off in North America.. my
feeling is the entrenched system and the regulations that support it would
make it very difficult, if not criminal.

~~~
eof
I use venmo a few times a month; I guess this isn't really 'taking off' but it
doesn't seem like the regulations are really the dampening factor; just that
we have better alternatives.

~~~
mod
I use square cash very often. I like it more than venmo, mostly because it
started out using email, which is so universal and doesn't rely on a mobile
app or anything else.

------
qznc
> Of course, someone will have to setup a micropayments processor

... and that someone will soon be bankrupt due to fraud.

------
EnFinlay
Feedback to the author. I found the writing style of the opening extremely
choppy and without flow. Every paragraph was one or two sentences except for
one which had 4 sentences (and only accomplished that by being super short,
choppy sentences). Stopped reading :(

