Author: Dayton Outar
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Inside the Bloody Ocean of Cashless Payments
There is a quiet assumption in finance today that the world is steadily moving toward a cashless future. Mobile wallets, digital currencies, and fintech apps are framed as inevitable winners in a linear transition away from physical cash. That assumption is wrong. The payments landscape is not a clean transition. It is a competitive battlefield…
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What’s Wrong With Cash?
Cash has been the backbone of commerce for centuries. It is simple, universally understood, and does not require electricity, internet connectivity, or banking infrastructure to function. Yet despite these advantages, governments and financial institutions around the world have increasingly promoted digital payments. The reason is not that cash is broken, but that it creates structural…
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The Investor’s Toolkit: From Deposits to Derivatives
Investors today can choose from a wide range of financial instruments, each designed for different goals, time horizons, and risk tolerance. The simplest instruments are cash and deposits. Savings accounts and fixed deposits offered by banks are used for capital preservation and liquidity. They are most appropriate for individuals who want low risk and easy…
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The Missing Identity in Jamaica’s Digital Economy
I can’t remember exactly how I stumbled upon the article, Corporate Digital IDs to Fight Business Fraud, but it was an insightful read. More importantly, it exposed a blind spot we may have as Jamaica pushes toward a digital economy. We spend a lot of time discussing digital payments, central bank digital currencies, national identification…
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Trust, Biometrics and the Future of Identity in Jamaica
In the previous article, One Person, Many Identities: Jamaica’s Fragmented Identity Problem, we discussed how Jamaica’s identity system is spread across several government agencies. Jamaica’s proposed National Identification System (NIDS) aims to address this by establishing a single root identity for each person. But an important question remains: how will identities actually be enrolled? Enrollment…