✅Your Swipes Just Got Safer

Greetings, wonderful peeps!

👋 Welcome to Switch Daily.

October is here, and it even gave us all a weekend, to begin with, 😎. So far, so good right?

Well, it was a pretty bittersweet weekend overall. The interest rates have gone up again for the fourth time in a year with a 50 bps hike in Repo rates (ie. the rate at which commercial banks borrow from the central bank). How does that affect you? Well, for starters home loan EMIs will go up. And so on. Generally, loans will become more expensive. The big idea is to tame inflation. Hopefully, that works out.

The good news is we’re now officially a 5G nation, so go for it yeahhh! 👏👏👏.

Here’s what we’ve got for you:

• Market pulse

• RBI’s new credit card rules

• Top news

• Meme of the day

Market pulse 📈

The market is dry as a desert 🌵

After a choppy end to September, October started with a modest improvement in the crypto market. Following a bearish session over the weekend fueled by market dread over the Fed’s actions and the global economic outlook, it was a mixed Sunday session for the crypto market.

Most of the top cryptos by market cap were seen trading in the red, but Binance Coin (BNB) bucked the broader market trend. Ripple (XRP) led the way down, sliding by 5.64%, and witnessed a return to $0.45. Mirroring similar trends, Cardano (ADA) also traded in the red, losing (-2.56) and Dogecoin (DOGE) and Ethereum (ETH) followed the laggards with (-2.16%) and (-2.65%), respectively. Today, the market looks steady with CRE8 indicating a fall of merely 0.4% in 24 hours.

🏛️RBI to the Rescue ⛑️

Ever noticed how we come across disturbing headlines like these 👇🏽almost every other day?

Not sure about you, but every time I pull out my credit card at a store, my brain recalls these stories in a loop, and my heart goes beating like a parade drum. 🙈

But, it ain’t so scary anymore. Guess why?

Starting Oct 1, The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has introduced three new rules for credit/debit cards. And these rules are supposed to keep us safer from credit/debit card stealing rascals.

Rule #1 - Credit card issuers can’t increase your card's limit without your permission in the first place. Wait, they were allowed to do it all this while?! Well, no one read the fine print while signing up. 😶

Rule #2 - Suppose you received your card from a bank but were busy cribbing about the bear market or something and forgot to activate your card for more than a month; the bank is supposed to get an OTP-based consent from you before activating the card. If you decline, the bank must cancel your card within seven days.

Rule #3 - Card Tokenization. No, these aren't the crypto tokens we know of.

Then, what the heck is that?

So every time you make a transaction using your card, the merchant gets access to your card deets like

• 16-digit card number

• CVV, a.k.a those three numbers on the back of your card

• The card’s expiry date

To make it easier for you to transact again, merchants (especially the ones online) have been storing these details on their servers. This works most of the time. But then, in some cases, it ends up in the wrong hands. Sites get hacked.

And that's how most card frauds occur — these details can be used to make another transaction without your knowledge. Coz using a card may be super convenient, but it isn't very secure. So the central bank came up with a tokenization system for card transactions.

The central bank issued tokenization guidelines in March 2020, with an implementation deadline of December 2021. After much delay, it finally came into effect on 1st October 2022.

With the new rules, online merchants can not store your credit card details. They are only given a tokenized version of credit card data, so even if a site gets hacked or your data is somehow compromised, your card details are still secure.

Will these rules make our payments absolutely secure? We don’t know yet. But what’s that famous proverb ‘prevention is better than cure’ also, it doesn't cost us anything, so why not give it a try?

What else is trending? 🔥

👀Another Cardano upgrade goes live

Cardano received yet another network update on 27 September 2022. This dApp-focussed enhancement, also termed the Plutus V2 upgrade, aims to improve the quality and speed of development within the Cardano ecosystem. Read more.

📱FB and Instagram users in the US can now cross-post NFTs

Meta— the firm behind Facebook— has finally opened doors to NFT crossposting, allowing users to move the collectibles across platforms. For now, Facebook and Instagram will support digital asset crossposting to all users based in the United States. Read more.

🇺🇸California adopts blockchain-powered recordkeeping

The US state of California has allowed users to opt for blockchain-powered marriage, birth, and death certificates. Governor Gavin Newsom signed this proposal into law, wherein county offices were instructed to adopt this novel technology. Read more.

📞Spanish telecom giant enables crypto payments

Spanish telecom giant Telefónica has finally enabled crypto-specific purchases on its Tu.com marketplace. The $19-billion company has partnered with Spanish crypto exchange Bit2Me to kickstart this initiative. Read more.

Memewhile ideas like these 🙆…

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