Digital wallets are booming, but regulatory authorities are still "catching up"
Article: Reporter - Sarah Barnett ( Sarah Barnett )
Consumers can complete everything from buying coffee to attending concerts with a simple tap on their smartphones; meanwhile, wallet apps are continuously adding new features, such as lending, investing, cryptocurrencies, digital IDs, and virtual cards. Regulators, on the other hand, are stuck in old rules, chasing after new applications.
From "Beam Transfers" to a Billion-User Mobile Financial Life
As early as 1999—eight years before the first-generation iPhone was released—a Silicon Valley startup called Confinity packaged PayPal.com as a "killer app," claiming that users only needed an email address to transfer money.
Even more astonishing is that it started with a more peculiar concept: transferring funds via infrared "beams." Confinity once attempted to implement this at a breakfast shop called Buck’s in Woodside, California.