Silicon Valley's Purpose; Alipay Grows; and more [Weekly Business Newsletter]

January 30, 2015 Weekly Business Newsletter

REVIEW Letter from Silicon Valley: “This Town Used to Think Big” Capital and engineering talent have been flocking to seemingly trivial mobile apps. But would we really be better off if more startups instead went directly after big problems?       BUSINESS REPORTS Alipay Is Starting to Look Like the Future of Chinese Banking What started as a service to help customers buy goods from Alibaba retailers has grown into a serious finance business all its own.

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BUSINESS REPORTS A Weekend on Bitcoin Is it possible to live for 48 hours on nothing but Bitcoin?       BIG QUESTION New Technologies Shake Up Old Money As technology-driven payment ideas give cash a run for its money, the big winners could be established banks and credit card companies.     BUSINESS REPORTS Frappuccinos by Phone The iconic coffee merchant built a payment app that quickly became the envy of retail. Can it recharge Starbucks’s growth despite new competition?     BUSINESS REPORTS Mobile Payment Systems Tout Security As mobile payments become more common, thieves will be more likely to target them.     BUSINESS REPORTS Economic Shakeup via New Payment Technologies Economist Simon Johnson examines how a “revolution in payments” could affect companies and communities.     BUSINESS REPORTS Diving Deeper into the Future of Money A Bitcoin update, worthwhile further reading, and a list of upcoming events focused on payments, commerce, and banking.     BUSINESS REPORTS Testing the New Money Transfer Apps Payment apps are all the rage. But how well do they work?     BUSINESS REPORTS M-Pesa Tries Again with an Approach Tailored to South Africa After great success in East Africa, mobile-phone wallet M-Pesa hit some bumps in South Africa.     BUSINESS REPORTS Hacking Payments     BUSINESS REPORTS Are You Really Who You Say You Are? Banks are using mobile technology to build better profiles of credit card customers that will be harder to fake—or shake off.     BUSINESS REPORTS Cheaper, Faster, but Still Much Smaller Five years in, Dwolla’s trying to make a dent in the payment processing business dominated by big names like Visa and MasterCard.       BUSINESS REPORTS Why Payments Technology Is Crucial to Today’s Hottest Startups Improving payment technology is vital if Internet companies are to make an impact, says Stripe CEO Patrick Collison.       VIEW How Network Science Is Changing Our Understanding of Law The first network analysis of the entire body of European Community legislation reveals the pattern of links between laws and their resilience to change.     SEE MORE STORIES »