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Since 2007, income support recipients in the Northern Territory (NT) have been subjected to compulsory income management (CIM), a form of welfare conditionality which continues, despite the withdrawal of CIM from other locations in Australia and research that identifies negligible benefits. Implemented with the goal of improving social well‐being and health outcomes, CIM quarantines a proportion of income support payments which cannot be used to purchase alcohol, gambling, pornography and in some cases tobacco, to direct payments to priority needs of recipients and encourage socially responsible behaviour. This article presents the perspectives of welfare sector stakeholders in the NT on the ongoing impact of CIM on income support recipients and their communities. It draws on semi‐structured interviews with 26 participants with expertise across non‐government service delivery, government, legal and advocacy sectors. The findings detail that CIM is considered ineffective in reducing social harms such as substance misuse, can contribute to situations of family violence, and exacerbates challenges for recipients living in regional and remote areas. It also highlights the poor compatibility of community income management in regional and remote contexts, its top‐down design, and views that CIM is a form of social control and disempowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to examine the causation linking financial technology to economic growth in the East African Community states from 1997 to 2019. Design/methodology/approach: Autoregressive distributed lag is used. Gross domestic product per capita proxies economic growth, automated teller machines, point of sale, debit card ownership and mobile banking measure financial technology. Findings: The results unveil a significant relationship between financial technology and economic growth. The findings show bidirectional causality between automated teller machine and economic growth, with unidirectional causation from economic growth to point of sales and internet banking, mobile banking and government effectiveness to economic growth. The error correction term is negatively significant, demonstrating a long-term convergence between Fintech measures and economic growth. Research limitations/implications: The governments should effectively enact and implement policies that protect investments in financial technologies to boost economic growth in the East African Community countries. The government should reduce taxes on financial technology equipment and related services. The use of automated teller machine, debit card ownership and internet banking should be encouraged through cashless transactions. Financial institutions should adopt cashless operation policies to encourage the use of financial technologies. Originality/value: Research results on the bond between financial technology and economic growth are not conclusive. These studies demonstrate that technological innovations are double edged-swords, with both positive and negative sides. The results are conflicting; some reveal positive relationships, while others show negative links. Hence, research is required to fill the lacuna. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do coordination failures constrain financial technology adoption? Exploiting the Mexican government's rollout of 1 million debit cards to poor households from 2009 to 2012, I examine responses on both sides of the market and find important spillovers and distributional impacts. On the supply side, small retail firms adopted point-of-sale terminals to accept card payments. On the demand side, this led to a 21 percent increase in other consumers' card adoption. The supply-side technology adoption response had positive effects on both richer consumers and small retail firms: richer consumers shifted 13 percent of their supermarket consumption to small retailers, whose sales and profits increased. (JEL E42, L25, L81, O14, O33) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: We use a novel data set covering all domestic debit card transactions in physical terminals by Norwegian households, to nowcast quarterly Norwegian household consumption. These card payments data are not subject to revisions and are available weekly without delays, providing a valuable early indicator of household spending. To account for mixed‐frequency data, we estimate various quantile mixed‐data sampling (QMIDAS) regressions using predictors sampled at monthly and weekly frequency. We evaluate both point and density forecasting performance over the sample 2011Q4–2019Q4. Our results show that MIDAS regressions with debit card transactions data improve both point and density forecast accuracy over competitive standard benchmark models that use alternative high‐frequency predictors. Finally, we illustrate the benefits of using the card payments data by obtaining a timely and relatively accurate nowcast of 2020Q1, a quarter characterized by heightened uncertainty due to the COVID‐19 pandemic. We further show how debit card data have been useful in nowcasting consumption during the four subsequent quarters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world is turning to financial fraud as a base for daily transactions due to the rapid growth of digital technologies, which creates numerous new opportunities for criminals to misuse credit and debit cards. The card's issuer should offer a service to shield users from any risks they might encounter in order to guarantee the security of users of those cards. This study describes the usage of deep learning algorithms for prediction of financial fraud. With the aim to represent the duration sequence generated by series of identical card transactions, we propose the use of an evolving machine learning technique. However, because most datasets containing financial fraud transactions are severely skewed, financial fraud detection remains a substantial issue for statistical solutions. This is a crucial field of research since fraudulent instances are difficult to identify and get tougher as more data is collected, decreasing the number of these instances. In this paper, utilising a Flexible Simulated Instance approach, the problem of data imbalance is resolved. Also, a tuned bidirectional LSTM with attention layer (A-BiLSTM) is proposed to detect the financial fraud. This model aims to improve existing detection strategies and detection accuracy in the context of enormous amounts of data. A benchmark dataset of financial frauds is used to evaluate the proposed model, and the outcomes are compared against existing models based on various deep learning approaches. The testing findings showed that A-BiLSTM performed flawlessly, achieving 99.96% accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global growth of the e-commerce industry has heightened concerns among consumers, businesses, and financial institutions regarding fraud while using credit and debit cards and safeguarding personal information. It is necessary to secure information disseminated over insecure channels to prevent unauthorized access. Cryptography and steganography are widely used for this purpose. However, completely relying on the combined usage of both may not be enough in today's world, resulting in weak security. By combining visual cryptography, more levels of security can be added, thus boosting the security of secret information. This study suggests a data security framework that employs multiple levels of security for information. At the first level of security, cryptography is used to encrypt the secret information, and at the second level of security steganography is used to conceal the encrypted text. After that, visual cryptography is applied, which generates the shares of the image obtained. Finally, image steganography is used to hide the generated shares in different color images. When used together, these data security methods greatly improve the secrecy, trustworthiness, and effectiveness of secret messages. The precision of text is determined through Mean Square Analysis (MSE) and correlation coefficient, which involves a comparison of sent and received text. MATLAB environment is used for the implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the permissibility of credit cards and debit cards under Islamic jurisprudence. In the light of Shariah principles, we analyze the concepts of riba (usury), gharar (uncertainty), and maisar (gambling), and their implications on modern payment methods. We explore the differences between credit cards, which often involve interest and uncertainty and debit cards, which may be considered a more permissible option. The article discusses the views of prominent Islamic scholars and jurists on the matter, highlighting the need for Muslims to be cautious when using credit cards and to opt for Shariah-compliant alternatives. By understanding the Islamic perspective on credit cards and debit cards, Muslims can make informed decisions about their financial transactions and ensure compliance with their faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digitalisation of the welfare state has intensified in recent years, with burdens unevenly distributed between technology advocates and those receiving government income support. Putting in place processes where people needing social security must meet mandatory requirements of digital literacy and divert a significant amount of their small incomes to pay for expensive technologies such as computers, smartphones, and data plans comes at a cost. This article examines lived experiences of First Nations Cashless Debit Card (CDC) holders who experienced digitalisation of their social security payments. Under the CDC, a range of restrictions were placed on purchases, spending social security income came with stigma, technology troubles meant that income was less secure, and Indigenous peoples' autonomy was undermined. Although the CDC has since been abolished, these issues remain relevant as a new cashless social security card, the SmartCard, has been introduced in 2023. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial literacy is crucial in empowering individuals, particularly rural women, to make informed financial decisions and achieve economic well-being. This study explores the financial literacy and awareness levels of rural women in the Malappuram district, focusing on the relationship between socio-demographic factors and financial literacy. The research, conducted through a cross-sectional descriptive study among 100 women, reveals that most respondents are young, educated, and possess a moderate level of awareness and knowledge of financial tasks and products. The study highlights significant barriers to financial literacy, including social and cultural issues, lack of education, income constraints, and gender discrimination. Despite these challenges, the penetration of financial products like bank accounts, debit cards, and mobile banking is relatively high among the participants. The study finds a significant relationship between age and financial literacy but no significant correlation between education or income levels and financial literacy awareness. The findings underscore the need for targeted financial education programs to enhance financial literacy among rural women, addressing identified barriers and focusing on age-specific strategies to improve their economic participation and contribute to national economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this research paper is to analyze the impact of financial innovations on the financial performance of commercial Banks in Pakistan. For this purpose, we used six years data from 2013 to 2019. The financial performance of banks was chosen as dependent variable, and it was measured through three profit indicators such as return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE) and earning per share (EPS), while number of ATMs, number of credit card users, number of debit card users and internet banking were taken as independent variables. Out of total 44 commercial banks, 12 banks were selected as a sample of study. Econometric techniques such as descriptive statistics, correlation Matrix, ADF test, ARDL model, Bound test and Error Correction Model were applied to analyze the data and draw the results. The findings of the study reveal that number of ATMs, number of credit card users, number of debit card users and internet banking have positive and significant relationship with banking profitability in Pakistan as the profitability of selected banks was improved substantially during the study period. The insight for the policy makers is that they should devise such policies which enhance maximum use of internet banking in order to reduce automation cost of banks, boost their efficiency and boost their profitability in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From each to each year, from decades and decades, the fraud and scam are growing more and more powerful, although we cannot avoid it 100% since the fraud and scams using any method to make a crack of hole or other chances to steal that make a company and other e-commerce suffer losses in small or large numbers. This leads to new rules that can make e-commerce stand a chance and avoid the losses of either the e-commerce itself or the client that is trying to make online transactions. This paper has a goal to answer 5 research questions about face recognition as base protocol in online transaction. Method that we use is systematic literature review that has 7 steps from deciding research question until data synthesis. For the result from 5 research questions are answered very well, which is RQ1. How effective face recognition can decrease fraud identity on online transactions. RQ2. What kind of struggle and problem makes this technology unable to integrate with online payment. RQ3. What kind of perception and the acceptance of the user about the face recognition method for authentication in online transactions? RQ4. How far the technology is for face recognition can integrate with the system online payment transaction that increases the efficiency transaction with or without compromising security. RQ5. What kind of law of implication and etiquette from the user face recognition in online transactions and how can the system be made to follow the regulation that already exists. From that our conclusion is clear which is face recognition is safe and secure but since the technology is very well and good, then need proper technology to support it further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic induced a volatile pattern in household expenditures on a global scale. In this study, we analyse the mitigating effect of vaccination trends on pandemic-related depression in expenditures by exploiting province-level high-frequency credit and debit card data from a large emerging market, Türkiye. The baseline analysis confirms the moderating role of widespread vaccination with respect to consumption tendencies. Our baseline findings are validated by a myriad of robustness checks. Moreover, we show that this effect on pandemic-household expenditures nexus is stronger for provinces with a higher share of services industries in total value-added. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, U.S. advocates and funders have supported direct cash transfers for individuals and families as an efficient, immediate, and non‐paternalistic path to poverty alleviation. Open questions remain, however, about their implementation. We address these using data from debit card transactions, customer service call‐line logs, and in‐depth interviews from a randomized control study of a monthly unconditional cash gift delivered via debit card to mothers of young children living near the federal poverty line. Because much of the impact of the intervention occurs through mothers' decisions about how to allocate the Baby's First Years (BFY) money, we argue that implementation science must recognize the role of policy targets in implementing policy, not just in terms of policy outcomes but also policy implementation processes. Further, our analysis shows that mothers experience key aspects of the cash intervention's design as intended: they viewed the cash gift as unconditional and knew the money was reliable and would continue monthly, receiving the correct amount with few incidents. Delivering funds via debit card worked well, offering mothers flexibility in purchasing. We also illuminate how design features shaped mothers' experiences. First, although they knew it was unconditional, the social meaning of the BFY money to mothers—seen as "the baby's money"—shaped their engagement with and allocation of it. Second, low public visibility of mothers' receipt of this money limited the financial demands or requests from others, potentially facilitating more agency over and a greater ability to use the money as they chose, without claims from kin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Shaw Society (ISS) offers various benefits for members, including discounted subscriptions to Shaw-related journals, eligibility for travel grants and prizes, discounts on conference registration fees, and access to valuable research tools. The ISS also provides scholarships and grants to support younger scholars in attending Shaw-related events and conducting research on Bernard Shaw. Membership forms and application details for scholarships can be found on the ISS website. [Extracted from the article]