This in turn increases the pressure inside the liquid, which compresses the microgel particles until a new equilibrium is reached.Īt the time, however, the research team was unable to provide experimental proof of the cloud of counterions. When the microgels come close together, their charge clouds overlap (see image above). These so-called counterions arrange themselves around the negative charges in the ball, forming a positively charged cloud on the surface of the microgel. This three-dimensional tangle therefore contains negative point charges that attract positively charged ions in the liquid. This can be thought of as resembling a ball of wool, with the properties of a sponge. These carry a weak negative charge at one end. Together with a team of researchers, he published a paper in 2016 explaining the phenomenon.īriefly explained, in this situation the polymer particles consist of long carbon chains. The physicist has been studying the miraculous shrinking of microgels in colloids for the past ten years. The researchers were puzzled: How does a gel particle know how big its neighbor is without touching it? Is there some sort of "telepathy" going on between microgels? Amazingly, this happens even when the particles are not actually in contact with one another. When this happens, large particles contract until they are the size of their smaller neighbors. Whereas the physics of colloids involving hard particles, such as color pigments in emulsion paint, is well understood, colloids involving soft particles, such as hemoglobin, the red pigment in blood, or droplets of fat in milk, hold some startling surprises.Īn experiment carried out 15 years ago showed that soft particles made of polymers-so-called microgels-shrink abruptly when their concentration in a solvent is increased above a certain threshold. This would at least allow CBA, NAB and Westpac customers to pay with iPhones - although snapping a QR code with a camera is not as smooth a payment experience as simply waving the phone near a contactless terminal.They flow through our arteries, add color to our walls or make milk tasty: tiny particles or droplets that are very finely distributed in a solvent. But given it works via a QR code, it could move into point of sale (POS) payments. Beem It's three shareholders failed when they challenged Apple's closing of NFC access at the ACCC last year.ĪNZ's decision to break ranks with the cozy oligopoly ruffled the feathers of CBA, NAB and Westpac, and also their customers, who can't use the their iPhones to make tap-and-go payments.Īt the moment, Beem It is targeting peer-to-peer payments. If that's the case, it won't delight the Reserve Bank, which wants the NPP to facilitate competition for payments services.Ī second interesting aspect of Beem It is what it says about how the banks might play against Apple.Īmong the big four banks, Apple Pay is only available by ANZ, because only ANZ agreed to give the tech giant a slice of its transaction revenue in order to get access to the iPhone's NFC antenna, which Apple controls. It will be interesting to see, therefore, whether Beem It's arrival makes it even harder for Osko to scale. It uses the credit card network of Visa and Mastercard to pull money from a sender's account, and the Eftpos system to put funds into the recipient's account.Īs of last week, there had only been 10,000 Beem It downloads, but CBA, NAB and Westpac on Monday have launched a national advertising campaign in conjunction with Beem It and have ambitious aspirations for growth. Josh Robenstoneīeem It plans to create a new peer-to-peer real-time payments brand that uses existing payments "rails", rather than the NPP. And given Osko operates through an existing banking app, these aren't necessarily the 'go to' apps when customers think about making payments.īeem It might be a way for CBA, NAB and Westpac to compete with Apple Pay at the point of sale in the future. Westpac and ANZ haven't yet made the system widely available to customers. However, the NPP uptake appears slower than what was initially expected. (A PayID is the new way that NPP payments can be addressed, replacing the BSB and account number). The company is owned by BPay, which is also owned by the big four banks.īpay says 10 million payments worth $6.5 billion have already been sent over the NPP, and since its launch, more than 1.6 million "PayIDs" have been created. The timing of Beem It's launch is intriguing, given the Reserve Bank-backed real-time payments platform, known as the new payments platform (NPP), was turned on only in mid-February.īeem It will directly compete with the first "overlay" service being offered on the NPP – a real-time, peer-to-peer payments service known as Osko.
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