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Regulation Should Preserve Benefits of Digital Currency
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has released a staff paper that examines the risks and use cases of virtual currencies such as bitcoin, recommending a balanced regulatory framework that will not stifle innovation.
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- Technology
- Tags
- regulations
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Inside Facebook’s Ambitious Plan to Connect the Whole World
The stern woman behind the press desk at the United Nations is certain I’ve made a mistake about the person I’m here to see. “Mr. Mark Zuckerberg?” she says. “Who’s he?” He’s an Internet executive, I tell her. He started Facebook. It’s the second week of the United Nations’ General Assembly. Several hundred reporters crowd into the press holding area. Nearby, on the main plaza, heads of state stroll by. In this place, it seems, Mark Zuckerberg might as well be Mark Smith. She checks her dog-eared schedule, then makes a call, enunciating into the receiver: “ZOO-ker-burg. Mark ZOO-ker-burg.” Silence. “Yes, the Facebook guy.” More silence, during which it occurs to me the UN is like the opposite of Facebook. If it had motivational posters on the wall, they’d read: Move slow and break nothing. Finally, she hangs up and turns back to me. Zuckerberg is on the program after all, she concedes, speaking just before German chancellor Angela Merkel.
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- Technology
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Mobile Money Fraud Hits Rural Kenya Residents Hard
Mobile money has made lives easier for most people in Africa, but this has not come cheap for the users with con tricksters forever devising means and ways of stealing the money. In Kenya, for example, con men are applying tricks that are more advanced than service providers and users.
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- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Will India Go Cashless If Mobile Payments Take Off?
As soon as Binod Upadhyay arrives at a destination he immediately turns round to check if the customer is pulling out a wallet or a mobile phone.
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- Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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Israel to Provide India With Better, Cheaper Health Care
Already close collaborators in areas like defense and agritech, Israel and India will soon be working together on health technologies, through the good offices of the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation.
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- Health Care, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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IBM Signs $38 Million Deal for ATM Infrastructure Management in India
IBM has signed a Rs 260 crore deal with BTI Payments for ATM infrastructure management, as it focuses on deepening its hold on the financial services sector in India.
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- Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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National Bank & Airtel Kenya Ink Major Pact to Expand Reach
National Bank of Kenya and Airtel Kenya have announced the opening of their distribution networks to offer each other’s services in a major partnership agreement geared at expanding reach of services.
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- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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NexThought Monday: Would You Give Up Your Cellphone to Save a Child?
Last fall, University of San Francisco professor Bruce Wydick presented his students with a confounding challenge: If everybody in the classroom were to make a $50 direct cash transfer, he said, they could potentially save a poor Ugandan child's life. In fact, he added, a donor had pledged to give $50 through GiveDirectly for every student, on one simple condition: They had to part with their cell phones for two weeks. Wydick describes the fallout in this thought-provoking post.
- Categories
- Technology
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