In the last decade, the way we make our payments has become more seamless, faster and cheaper.

We’ve switched from signatures on paper cheques to a few swipes and a tap on a mobile phone.

But with these advances have come massive new opportunities for cybercriminals.

From cons using deception and social engineering to romance fraud, unauthorised transfers, hacks and identity theft, the cat and mouse game between scammers and those policing the payments system has now reached a new level of intensity.

In the latest New Money Review podcast I’m joined to discuss this topic by Steven Murdoch, professor of security engineering at University College, London.

During the podcast, we cover:

• Why technologists, lawyers and economists all focus on payments security
• How should we treat victims of payments fraud?
• Why tricking customers into transferring funds is now the most lucrative payments scam
• How limits on customer reimbursement may cause banks to stop pursuing fraudsters
• Balancing responsibilities in customer reimbursement schemes
• How AI may help payments fraudsters cast a wider net
• How the parameters of banks’ online payments systems can feed or starve fraud
• Does more secure always mean harder to use?
• Cross-border fraud and the reversibility of payments
• Cryptocurrency from the perspective of payments security
• Telegram and tensions over encrypted messaging networks
• The Horizon scandal and the legal presumption of reliable IT systems

When, why and how do countries go bust? That’s the topic of the latest New Money Review podcast, where I’m joined by Greg Makoff, a former physicist, banker, government advisor and now senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Makoff is the author of a recent book on what has been called “the most contentious default in history”—Argentina’s 2001-2016 debt restructuring.

In the podcast, we discuss:

• When, why and how countries go bust
• What distinguishes a sovereign insolvency from a corporate or personal bankruptcy
• Who has jurisdiction over sovereign defaults?
• What brings governments and creditors to the table?
• Sovereign immunity and the negotiating power between debtor and creditor
• What went wrong in Argentina’s debt restructuring?
• How Elliott Capital Management made billions on defaulted Argentinian debt
• The broader public policy lessons of Argentina’s debt restructuring
• China, the IMF and the geopolitics of sovereign debt
• Default risk in domestic and foreign currency bonds
• Why sovereign debt problems will never go away

Supporters of the $10trn private equity industry say it fuels economic growth and delivers leaner, better-performing companies.

One leading critic of the sector is Ludovic Phalippou, who says that the industry routinely overstates its financial performance. And, he says, private equity funds charge a whopping 6-7% a year in fees, wiping out any potential benefits to investors.

In the latest New Money Review podcast, I interview Phalippou, who is professor of financial economics at Oxford University. We cover:

• What is private equity?
• How big is the private equity market?
• Why have private equity assets grown fivefold in a decade?
• What is the economic footprint of private equity?
• How should we measure private equity funds’ performance?
• How honest are private equity firms in reporting performance?
• Do private equity funds have higher returns than public equity funds?
• What do private equity funds cost?
• Agency conflicts in the private equity industry
• The impact of recent interest rate rises on private equity
• The need for standardised reporting of private equity performance.