Do biometric payment systems work during the COVID-19 pandemic?Insights from the Spanish users’viewpoint

Technological developments are changing how users pay for goods and services.In the context of the COVID-19(coronavirus disease 2019)pandemic,new payment systems have been established to reduce contact between buyer and seller.In addition to the pandemic,the future is payment processing is also uncertain due to the new EU security regulations of the Payment Services Directive(PSD2).Biometric payments one option that would guarantee the security of transactions and reduce the risk of conta-gion.This research analyses the intention to recommend the use of the mobile phone as a tool for collecting payments in a shop using iris reading as a biometric measure of the buyer.The moderating effect of the fear of contagion in the proposed relationships was also analysed.An online survey was carried out,which yielded a sample of 368 respondents.The results indicate that the main antecedents of intention to use,which precedes intention to recommend,are perceived trust,habit,personal innovativeness and comfort of use.Additionally,the moderating effect of COVID-19 was checked among users with a higher perception of risk.The results obtained have interesting implications for purchase management among manufacturers and retailers.

An Analysis of China's Physician Salary Payment System

Physician payment system （PPS） is a principal incentive system to motivate doctors to provide excellent care for patients. During the past decade, physician remuneration in China has not been in proportional to physician＇s average work load and massive responsibilities. This paper reviewed the constitution of the PPS in China, and further discussed the problems and issues to be addressed with respect to pay for performance. Our study indicated that the lower basic salary and bonus distribution tied to ＂profits＂ was the major contributor to the physician＇s profit-driven incentive and the potential cause for the speedy growth of health expenditures. We recommend that government funding to hospitals should be increased to fully cover physicians＇ basic salary, a flexible human resource and talent management mechanism needs to be established that severs personal interest between physicians and hospitals, and modern performance assessment and multiplexed payment systems should be piloted to encourage physicians to get the more legitimate compensation.

A Long Term Evaluation of the Japanese Medical Payment System for Cataract Surgeries: Did the Medical Policy Reduce the Long Hospital Stay in Japan?

In this paper, we conducted a long term survey of the cataract surgeries. The sample period was about 7 years, from July 2005 to March 2012. We evaluated the effects of three revisions of the medical payment system that were done in 2006, 2008 and 2010. For the analysis, the Box-Cox transformation model and Hausman test using Nawata’s estimator were used for the length of stay (LOS) in hospitals, and the ordinary least squares method was used for the non-inclusive (mainly payments for surgeries) payments. We analyzed a dataset of 51,054 patients obtained from 60 hospitals (Hp1-60) where more than 300 one-eye cataract surgeries were performed during the period. For the LOS, we found that only the 2008 revision had significant impact on shortening the LOS but the other two did not. We also found very large differences among hospitals even after eliminating effects of patients’ characteristics and type of principle diseases as previous studies. For non-inclusive payments 2006 and 2008 revisions had significant impacts and the differences among hospitals were much smaller than those of the LOS.

On Financial Transfer Payment System from the Public Service Equalization Perspective

equalization of public services is not only conducive to the promotion of social justice; it maintains social stability and national unity, but also helps to promote the coordinated development of economy and society. States should give full play to the role of taxation mechanisms to actively promote the use of transfer payments to the equalization of basic public services. In this paper, we focus on China＇ s current system of transfer payments problems and we should deepen mode of transfer payment system＇ s equalization of basic public services under the trend of design.

DRG Payment System in the United States and Its Enlightenment to China

Objective To study the successful experience of implementing diagnosis related group(DRG)payment system in the United States and provide a reference for China’s reform of health insurance payment.Since the United States is the first country to develop and apply the DRG in the world,its research and practice of DRG are always at the forefront.Methods Literature research method was used to investigate DRG payment system,the specific steps of the payment,the setting method of relevant indicators,and the quality supervision measures.Results and Conclusion There are mainly three aspects from the experience of DRG payment system in the United States.Firstly,the government’s responsibility for health insurance is clarified.Secondly,the relevant indexes are set reasonably.Thirdly,the DRG weight and base rate are adjusted dynamically to ensure the fairness of DRG payment.Therefore,China should pay attention to the following three aspects:clarifying the main responsibility of the government in the reform of health insurance payment,establishing the quality control system of the first page of medical records,and improving the supervision mechanism for medical quality.

Evaluation of the inclusive payment system based on the diagnosis procedure combination with respect to cataract operations in Japan------A comparison of lengths of hospital stay and medical payments among hospitals

Following the recommendations of a report submitted by the Central Social Insurance Medical Council concerning the 2002 revision of the Medical Service Fee Schedule, a new inclu-sive payment system, which is based on the Diagnosis Procedure Combination (DPC) sys-tem, was introduced in 82 special functioning hospitals in Japan, effective beginning in April 2003. Since April 2004, the system has been gradually extended to general hospitals that satisfy certain prerequisites. In this paper, the new inclusive payment system is analyzed. Data pertaining to 1,225 patients, who were hospital-ized for cataract diseases and underwent lens operations from July 2004 to September 2005, are used. The lengths of hospital stay and medical payments among hospitals are com-pared. Even after eliminating the influence of patient characteristics, there are large differ-ences among hospitals in average lengths of hospital stay and DPC-based inclusive pay-ments. The highest average inclusive payment is 3.5 times as high as the lowest payment. On the other hand, there are relatively small differ-ences in non-inclusive payments based on the conventional fee-for-service system—the larg-est deviation from the average of all hospitals is approximately 10%. Thus, although payments based on the DPC account for only one-third of the total medical payments for this disease, the major differences in medical payments among hospitals are caused by differences in their DPC-based inclusive payments. The results of the study strongly suggest that revisions of the payment system in Japan are necessary for the efficient use of medical resources in the future.

The Design and Construction of an Intelligent Taxi Electronic Payment System Solution

Today the usage of electronic services in different taxies seems to be necessary. Organizing a system to pay the taxi electronically with the card by the passenger can decrease the need to carry cash. Designing and building of such a system by using a special taximeter with new features and also one or more card reader can be fixed into the taxi. Payment is with the smart credit card and from the client's account. The information of presented services is stored in the system and will be recorded as offered services. The driver can have access to taxi organization or some special terminals electronically to see his account and also he can receive a receipt.

Towards the Advancement of Cashless Transaction: A Security Analysis of Electronic Payment Systems

In recent decades, day-to-day lifestyle requires online payments as easy and simple solutions to several financial transactions, which makes the concept of Electronic payment Systems very popular in the growth of a cashless society. In fact, cashless transactions through simple mobile apps are not merely a concept anymore rather are implemented robustly and being used extensively. On the dark side, obvious financial benefits are making these apps vulnerable to being attacked, which can be successful through security breaches. These cybersecurity issues need to be traced out and resolved to make the financial transactions through an app secure and trustworthy. In this paper, several related papers are analyzed to trace out possible cybersecurity issues in the domain of Electronic Transaction System. The objective is to establish sufficient theoretical background to propose methodologies for measuring security issues and also identify the security strength of any FinTech application and provide standard security metrics.

Touch-and-Go Mobile Payment System

Contactless mobile payment devices are fast, convenient and user friendly means for executing small value business transactions. This kind of transactions is preferred to be executed conveniently and on the fly by just tapping a mobile payment device to a mobile terminal. Mobility, convenience and fast transaction execution are very important payment system properties in potentially crowded places such as in public transportation. These properties are in practice causing transaction execution problems, such as: delays in offline transaction execution, transaction atomicity failures caused by mobile data communication drops, lack of central control on mobile transaction system components and increased vulnerability risk caused by easy physical access to the mobile transaction system components. This paper describes a holistic transaction processing model for resolving mentioned problems in micropayment mobile touch-and-go transaction systems. Defined processing model was implemented on real public transportation mobile payment system where it was proven as a robust solution for execution of small value touch-and-go mobile ticketing transactions.

Payment for Water-Related Ecosystem Services as a Strategic Watershed Management Approach

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) have been created worldwide to assist watershed management and improve or maintain water quality. Considering their importance, we conducted a holistic review of payment for water-related ecosystem services to understand how this instrument has been applied in watershed management worldwide. First, we identified the watershed management actions considered by the PES programs and the challenges of implementing water-related PES. After we identified the methods and criteria used to define priority areas for water-related PES. Our review considered articles published on the Web of Science from 2011 to 2022. We found 236 articles relating PES to water resources, highlighting the main water conservation strategies: native vegetation conservation, native vegetation restoration, and implementing best agricultural practices. The method most frequent was interview, followed by the use of technologies, document analysis, and hydrological models. Another significant result was that priority areas for receiving PES are mainly riparian zones, areas near or with native vegetation cover, areas with higher erosion potential, steep areas, and areas with socially vulnerable communities. This review was crucial to identify efficient water resource conservation strategies and potential challenges in the implementation and development of PES programs.

Network Structure and Reliability Analysis of a New Integrated Circuit Card Payment System for Hospital

This paper proposes a redundant network communication structure for the patient integrated circuit(IC)card payment system in a hospital information system(HIS),compares it with the network structure of normal hospital IC card system,and calculates the reliabilities of the related communications like the RS485communication and the Ethernet communication.The new structure can efectively promote the reliability of the hospital operation and ensure the payment collection when the Ethernet network is broken.The system is applied to a local hospital and the cost-performance rate is satisfactory during the application.

A review of spatial targeting methods of payment for ecosystem services

Payments for Ecosystem Services(PES)have been studied extensively over the past decade as an important policy tool for coordinating ecological protection and regional socioeconomic development.One of the greatest challenges of PES implementation is to understand where to pay,i.e.,spatial targeting,which can directly impact PES effectiveness and efficiency.In this study,we conducted a systematic review of spatial targeting methods based on literature analysis using Citespace.Firstly,peer-reviewed articles related to spatial targeting of PES were selected from the Web of Science database based on keywords.Cases applying PES spatial targeting methods were then chosen and analyzed after all articles were read.In total,70%of the chosen cases focused on improving the compensation efficiency of biodiversity or another single environmental objective,whereas the remaining cases focused on coordinating trade-offs between equity and efficiency or multiple environmental objectives.The main PES spatial targeting approaches included cost-benefit analysis,multi-objective optimization,data envelope analysis and other methods aimed at specific issues.Of these,cost-benefit analysis has been most widely applied at different scales,including county,regional and watershed scales.Significant differences among the different PES spatial targeting methods were found,including in PES spatial targeting dimensions,efficiency optimization approaches and method application conditions.The practice of PES spatial targeting requires the selection of appropriate methods based on contextual biophysical and socioeconomic conditions as well as relevant environmental issues.The combined application of PES spatial targeting methods,compensation willingness of stakeholders and dynamic implementation of PES spatial targeting should be considered in future research.

Payment for ecosystem services:emerging lessons

Market based initiatives for management of degrading ecosystems and their services have received the added attention as one of the innovative responses in the reent years. Those initiatives such as direct and indirect payment for ecosystem services like premium for rain forest honey, payment by the people at the lower reach to those at the upper reach for the watershed services etc. have drawn the attention of the decision makers as they have proved to be far more cost effective.This paper wynthesizes the key messages from some of the paper are carbon, watershed services and biodiversity, We find that while credible valuation of ecosystem services for all services remain a critical concern behind setting up the payment mechanism, absent of necessary institutional framework may seriously undermine this innovative response for management of ecosystems. In the paper, necessary institutional mechanisms enabling the market for those services have been sketched out, Key messages from those cases have been synthesized.

A simplified scheme for secure offline electronic payment systems

This paper proposes a secure offline electronic(e-)payment scheme by adopting Schnorr’s untraceable blind signature(BS).Thereby,to satisfy the essential security requirements of e-payment systems,it requires much more simple computations and becomes more practical than many existing schemes.Other considerations are:to prevent the forgery of e-coin,the Bank is only the lawful entity to produce the valid e-coin;and others can verify its correctness.To confirm no swindling,the e-coin owner also sticks her private signing key with the e-coin before spending it as the payment.Hence,through the commitment with challenge-response of Schnorr’s BS,the merchant can verify the spent e-coin,and the trusted authority can identify the dishonest spender if multiple spending occurs.Moreover,it embeds three distinct information of date,namely expiration,deposit,and transaction dates with every e-coin.Thereby,it minimizes the size of the Bank’s database,correctly calculates the interest of the e-coin,and helps in arbiter if multiple spending,respectively.Finally,it evaluates the performance and analyzes essential security requirements of the proposed scheme,plus studies a comparison with existing ones.

Assessment of Payment for Ecosystem Services in Zomba Mountain Forest Catchment Area, Malawi

The emergence of Payment for Ecosystem Services （PES） concept has raised expectations that ecosystem conservation can be achieved through popular payments rather than through unpopular measures of command and control. A study on PES was conducted in Zomba Mountain Forest （ZMF） catchment area in southern Malawi between August and December 2009. The aim was to assess stakeholders＇ role that would promote payment for ecosystem services as a management tool. A purposive sampling was used to identify the respondents who were randomly sampled for interviews. The findings show that PES can be used as a management tool in ZMF as there are key stakeholders who benefit from the catchment area in terms of services. While there is moderate level of PES awareness among the community and other stakeholders, the current forest policy does not address PES which may derail implementation of a fully fledged PES arrangement. The study revealed that existing management challenges originate from inadequate funding that ZMF Reserve gets from government. However, this challenge offers opportunities to stakeholders through PES to contribute and participate in conserving ZMF for sustained flow of benefits.

Necessary Conditions and Situational Variables of Payments for Ecosystem Services

Clarifying the necessary conditions for the emergence of payments for ecosystem services (PES) and the situational variables that affect PES is the basis for their interpretation, prediction, and selection. This article proposes an analytical framework for the emergence of PES and argues that the key to determining whether PES can occur and whether a selected PES program is appropriate is to evaluate the net gain. When payers anticipate that a PES program will provide a satisfactory number of ES and a net gain over the opportunity cost and will cover all costs, it is assumed that the program will be implemented. When it is difficult to accurately evaluate the net gain of PES, the situational variables that affect the costs and benefits need to be examined. The group characteristics, ES characteristics, spatial and temporal contacts between the suppliers and demanders, correlation with private goods and additionality are important situational variables that affect the emergence and choice of PES.

Payments for Ecosystem Services Incentives and Adoption of Land Use Interventions in Uluguru Mountains, Tanzania

The role played by Payments for ecosystem services (PES) in promoting land use interventions is increasingly being recognized as an important instrument for changing land use management worldwide. Despite the increase, adoption of land use interventions promoted by PES and factors influencing it are not well understood. This study was carried out to assess the adoption of land use interventions promoted by PES scheme four years after its implementation in the Uluguru Mountains, Tanzania. The specific objectives of this study were to assess the adoption and factors that influenced it. The study employed questionnaire survey method to collect data from 219 households selected randomly. Focus group discussions and key informant interviews were also conducted to complement information obtained through questionnaire surveys. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were employed. Binary logistic regression was used to analyse quantitative data obtained, while content analysis was applied to qualitative data. Results revealed that during the project implementation, 40% of the households did not adopt any of the promoted interventions. Unexpectedly, four years after the project ended, every household sampled had adopted the interventions. Households headed by younger heads and those with land ownership, households which received PES incentives and lived for a long time in the same area and those with more labour force and access to extension services were found to have adopted more interventions (p ≤ 0.05). Thus, the study concludes that socioeconomic characteristics, agricultural extension services and incentives initially provided to farmers are key factors influencing the adoption of land use interventions. Therefore, it is recommended to the government that it should support farmers to get land tenure and to provide them with more incentives to improve their farms through adopting technologies.

Payment for Ecosystem Services Markets and Rural Development in BrazilmA Co-evolutionary Approach

The article discusses the payment for ecosystem or environmental services markets in Brazil with a critical review, based on the ecological economics literature and focused on the concept of co-evolution. It is argued that the mainstream approach which considers ecosystem services as an externality has many shortcomings and fails to consider institutional and political aspects---all very critical for the design and implementation of a PES （Payment for ecosystem services） project or program. The complexity and the diversity of co-evolutionary relations between ecosystem services and socioeconomic activities are spatially or territorially specific. In this sense, different types of PES market have to adapt and coevolve with different ongoing development processes.

Financial literacy,behavioral traits,and ePayment adoption and usage in Japan

This study investigates how financial literacy and behavioral traits affect the adoption of electronic payment(ePayment)services in Japan.We construct a financial literacy index using a representative sample of 25,000 individuals from the Bank of Japan’s 2019 Financial Literacy Survey.We then analyze the relationship between this index and the extensive and intensive usage of two types of payment services:electronic money(e-money)and mobile payment apps.Using an instrumental variable approach,we find that higher financial literacy is positively associated with a higher likelihood of adopting ePayment services.The empirical results suggest that individuals with higher financial literacy use payment services more frequently.We also find that risk-averse people are less likely to adopt and use ePayment services,whereas people with herd behavior tend to adopt and use ePayment services more.Our empirical results also suggest that the effects of financial literacy on the adoption and use of ePayment differ among people with different behavioral traits.

Open banking and inclusive finance in the European Union:perspectives from the Dutch stakeholder ecosystem

In the European Union(EU),the revised Payment Services Directive(PSD2)aims to provide more convenient and customized financial products through open banking(OB)platforms.However,little attention has been paid to the role of OB in improving the financial well-being of the growing number of the EU’s underserved groups,which currently constitute approximately a quarter of its population.This study examines how the PSD2 and OB impact inclusive finance in the EU based on the perspectives of the Netherlands’ecosystem,one of the leaders in the EU’s financial technology(FinTech)landscape.A fundamental distinction can be drawn between the OB users and the ecosystem’s players.Regarding the impact of financial services on the users’inclusivity,while the PSD2 strengthens the infrastructure necessary for financial inclusion,many challenges remain,mainly because it was not designed for this purpose.This study identifies several areas of improvement that include adjustments to the know your customer and anti-money laundering processes for underserved customers,innovative ways to communicate the PSD2’s potential,and the regulation of technology providers’activities to build trust.Meanwhile,from the ecosystem’s position,there is a need to strengthen and improve microfinance regulation according to the opportunities provided by the PSD2 to support microfinance institutions(MFIs)in scaling up and reaching underserved clients across borders with innovative services.OB improvements can also be achieved by organizations formed by MFIs and FinTechs in collaboration with banks.Such hybrid institutions will combine the best features of each of them:knowledge of the needs of local underserved clients from MFIs,technological innovations from FinTechs,and large and trusted customer bases,infrastructures,and access to institutional investments and governments from banks.Finally,an EU inclusive OB sector depends on the centrality of trusted regulators as coordination bodies.The PSD2 requires adjustments for underserved populations’specific needs.OB improvements can be achieved by organizations formed by MFIs and Fin-Techs in collaboration with banks.Regulated technical service providers(TSPs)are crucial to building trust and customer adoption in OB.The European Banking Authority(EBA)may function as coordination body to design inclusive rules by engaging with OB stakeholders.As inclusive finance moves into open-finance and data eras,an increasing regulatory complexity and scope will require networks of innovative and trusted regulators.