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Joe Weppler / August 28, 2020

The Evolution of the Electronic Signature

A lot was going on in the second century. The Roman empire enjoyed a period of prosperity lead by the “Five Good Emperors.” The Antonine Wall was built in Scotland, while the Antonine Plague ravaged the Rhine. Cao Cao defeated Yuan Shao at the Battle of Guandu. And fastidious merchants in Jerusalem began adding written signatures to authenticate their transaction receipts.

Muslims took up the practice a few hundred years later, but it didn’t really become commonplace in Europe for another millennium after that. By the 16th century, literacy was on the rise and agreements were being put into writing more frequently. In 1677, an Act of the Parliament of England called the Statute of Frauds required certain types of wills, contracts and grants to be put in writing and signed to avoid fraud by perjury. The practice extended across the sea into colonial America, and the world’s obsession with wet-ink signatures only grew from there.

Signatures weren’t just for combating fraud. They became a cultural phenomenon. Signatures represented your word, and by extension your character. You could trust, both legally and morally, terms laid out and signed would be followed. If terms weren’t followed, there were repercussions.

In 1843, Scottish inventor Alexander Bain received British patent 9745 for his “Electric Printing Telegraph.” Nearly 40 years later, the first “scanning phototelegraph” was built. Xerox patented the first commercialized version of the modern fax machine in 1964. These inventions all contributed to the emphasis of signatures for authentication, even when two parties couldn’t be in the same room to shake hands.

Only a few years later, in 1976, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman theorized the idea of a digital signature. The next year, the RSA algorithm was invented, which is used by computers to encrypt messages. In 2000, the ESIGN Act signed by President Bill Clinton established that electronic signatures have the same legality as a traditional signature on a piece of paper.

Fast forward to today, and the world is gripped by a pandemic that has necessitated doing our very best to avoid physical contact with one another, and by extension, things others have touched. Electronic signatures continue surging in popularity, with newer, faster and more secure programs hitting the market every day.

While laws are different everywhere, general legal requirements for a signature are met by an electronic signature if it:

  • Adequately identifies the signatory
  • Adequately indicates the signatory’s approval or acceptance of the information
  • Is as reliable as is appropriate under the circumstances of the signing

Electronic signature programs have several requirements to be considered reliable, but there are two main ones. The first is that the means of creating the signature is linked to the person signing the document alone. Secondly, if any changes to the signature or documents are detectable digitally through the verification of data integrity.

While it’s clear that signatures have come a long way from the markings of authentication by merchants in Jerusalem, they still have the same end-goal — intent to hold up your end of a bargain, and verification that your word is the truth.

Joe Weppler / August 21, 2020

Cardboard Thieves are Making Millions Off Your Trash

If the cardboard in your recycling bin disappeared overnight, would you complain? Probably not. Instead, you’d just be happy it’s gone. After all, that’s why you’re putting it in the bin in the first place — so waste haulers can take it away.

However, in cities from Los Angeles to New York to Madrid, it’s often not the legitimate recycling firms doing the pickups. Instead, it’s cardboard trafficking gangs beating them to the punch.

Southeast of LA in Huntington Beach, waste management and environmental services companies claim that half to three-quarters of the cardboard that gets thrown in commercial recycling bins is stolen before their drivers pick it up.

“They know our routes and they get there before we do, and they pop the lock and they pull it out,” said Sue Gordon, vice-president of public affairs at Rainbow Environmental Services in an interview with The Associated Press.

At the recycling centers, these cardboard gangs are pulling in nearly $100 per ton of cardboard. They’re often soaking their stock in water to increase the weight. The sheer amount of cardboard that a city produces means that these thieves are making tens of millions of dollars — and you can bet that they’re not paying a cut to the city like legitimate haulers do.

Across the ocean in Madrid, police estimate that almost half of all cardboard put into recycling was being stolen. In February of 2020, the Spanish Guardia civil police force arrested 42 suspected cardboard gang members on suspicion of environmental offenses and money laundering. These gang members were accused of stealing more than 67,000 tons of cardboard per year since 2015. By Madrid’s estimate, they cost the City Council a total of €16 million in recycling revenues. That’s just under 19 million USD.

In New York, gangs circle the city in large rental trucks, scooping up the so-called “beige gold,” and delivering it to processing centers. It’s tough work, but the payout is quick and reliable. Their biggest enemy is New York City’s Business Integrity Commission, whose mission is to eliminate organized crime from public wholesale markets, trade waste and shipboard gambling industries. The BIC was formed in the early 2000s after the Mafia began inserting itself into the city’s waste management trade in the 1990s.

The BIC licenses legitimate waste-removal companies who sign contracts with the commercial establishments in the city to haul away their waste. These licensed companies are losing millions of dollars in revenue every year on cardboard, simply because the thieves are beating them to it.

According to AMCS, a global software solutions platform designed for the solid waste, recycling and material resource industries, the annual value of legitimately recycled cardboard and other paper is expected to climb to $5.4 billion globally by 2024.

So next time you throw some cardboard in your recycling bin, keep an eye out for the unmarked Econolines and rented U-Hauls prowling the streets. You never know who could be looking to make a quick buck off your trash!

Joe Weppler / August 14, 2020

COVID-19’s Impact on the Fintech Industry

At the intersection of financial services and technology sits the fintech (financial technology) industry — the workhorse behind several important and growing merchant services technologies such as digital currency and mobile payments.

Financial services are a ubiquitous aspect of economic stability. The methods through which we spend, save, and share our money are as important to keep in mind as the methods through which we make them. After all — what do the dollars in your bank accounts mean if there aren’t any safe ways to access them?

The fintech sector is just as susceptible as the rest of the world to the coronavirus pandemic. As the great race to adapt continues, one thing is certain — our services need to adapt with us. Thankfully, financial technology is doing just that.

Digital is Mainstream

In the early 2000s, financial institutions were just starting to take their first steps into the world of eCommerce. Flash forward a couple decades, technological advancements and the ever-growing dependence of humanity on the internet have made digital finance paramount. The technological advancements that drove the shift to digital stem from one of the fintech sector’s main ethos’: that financial services need to be accessible to everyone, including those with lower incomes.

The coronavirus pandemic has only further emphasized the need for digital financial services. ATMs are avoided, the use of cash has significantly decreased, and physical bank locations are operating on reduced hours. Thanks to fintech, we’re still able to access and spend our money, even while large banks struggle to adapt.

The Fight to Survive

On the flip side, the fintech sector is not without its struggles when it comes to the pandemic. Humans are creatures of habit, and when times get tough, we usually fall back on what we know works. In other words, smaller fintech start-ups that were making good headway poaching customers from big banks have found themselves struggling to maintain their progress. Experts have attributed this to the fact that big banks have big brand recognition — and the relative safety of familiarity works in their favour.

The Future of Fintech

Despite the skepticism people may have towards smaller startups, the continued emphasis on technology will inevitably cause the fintech sector to grow. Intelligent Automation (IA) is immune to coronavirus. Technologies like eWallets and contactless payment will continue to swell in popularity. Digital Know-Your-Customer solutions and counter money-laundering technologies will become more and more vital. And fintechs will continue to play an important role in driving the evolution of financial services.

Joe Weppler / August 7, 2020

How has the Novel Coronavirus Affected 5G Adoption?

The impact that COVID-19 has had on the world cannot be understated. While it was originally downplayed as little more than a variant of the flu, it quickly shut down entire nations. The speed of the economic collapse due to the virus was unlike anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes. Confirmed COVID-19 cases across the world exceed 19 million at the time of writing, and deaths have surpassed the 700,000 mark.

In the telecom world, people had different expectations for 2020. This year was supposed to be the year that 5G went mainstream. The fifth-generation tech standard for cellular networks is designed to connect virtually everyone and everything together, with higher speeds, lower latency, increased availability and more reliability.

Global operators started launching 5G networks in early 2019, and many countries expected to see their nationwide 5G mobile networks up and running by now. But by the time that the Mobile World Congress (the world’s biggest mobile conference) was cancelled in February due to the pandemic, telecom professionals knew that the 5G rollout would be slowed.

Some of the world’s earliest adopters and pioneers of the 5G rollout are the United States and China. The telecom companies based in these countries are absolutely critical to the continued rollout of 5G in other countries across the world. Unfortunately, they are also among the countries most severely impacted by the virus, which originated in Wuhan, China and has infected more than 4.9 million people in the U.S.

Even though the coronavirus has slowed down the worldwide rollout of 5G, the technology is more critical now than ever thanks to the changes that the pandemic has caused. With the rapid growth of remote-work in order to comply with social distancing regulations, more people are using their home networks than ever before. From work to communicating with family to spending time with friends — 5G makes it all easier and smoother. The benefit of 5G to video conferencing alone is worth noting in the new normal. Despite the impact of the virus, one thing will always remain true: as the demand grows, so must the supply.

So while the virus has slowed down the rollout of 5G, it certainly hasn’t stopped it. In fact, on the network infrastructure side, some carriers have actually benefitted from the fact that the coronavirus is keeping people indoors.

“We have been able to continue to build during this time of COVID and even accelerate that build in certain markets,” said Heidi Hemmer, Verizon’s vice president of network engineering.”

In particular, tower climbers have been able to work without interruption, and fiber layers have been able to speed up their pace thanks to relatively low traffic on city streets.

It remains to be seen how this pandemic affects 5G rollout long-term. While it has certainly had an impact, telecom analyst expect growth to pick up over the second half of 2020 as coronavirus lockdowns ease globally, 5G networks expand and more 5G devices become available.