Andrew Watson: The 'most influential' black footballer for decades lost to history

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  By Andrew Aloia BBC Sport Last updated on 11 October 2021 11 October 2021 . From the section Football Watson was a trailblazer who helped transform how football was played There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. And yet today, 100 years on from his death aged 64, Watson remains something of an enigma, the picture built around him a fractured one. His grainy, faded, sepia image evokes many differen...

South Africa’s new debit order system in full effect from May

 

The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) says it will implement the AC/DebiCheck payment system from 1 May as part of its modernisation efforts.

The SARB said this project aims to address the increasing levels of abuse in the debit order payment system, known commercially as the early debit order (EDO) payment system.

“From 1 May 2021, all new and renegotiated EDO mandates will be originated in the AC/DebiCheck payment system and not in the current EDO payment system,” it said.

“Early debit orders will only be processed through the AC/DebiCheck payment system, while normal debit orders will still be processed later in the day as per current arrangements.”

How it works

Under the EDO system, consumers provide a mandate to a company or user to collect money from their bank account.

In the new AC/DebiCheck payment system, this mandate is now given to the banks – where consumers provide authorisation to their bank to release the funds from their account when a debit order is submitted by a company or user from whom they bought goods or contracted for a service.

The AC/DebiCheck payment system was first implemented on 1 August 2018, and has been going through various stages and processes of testing and integration.

Companies or users of the EDO system had until 1 November 2019 to fully implement the AC/DebiCheck payment system. Since the implementation date, companies or users have been requested to begin using the system for all EDO collections.

“Owing to the complex nature of the AC/DebiCheck system, a lengthy ramp-up period was required to ensure that all stakeholders in the EDO collections ecosystem had implemented and tested their internal processes and interfaces to the AC/DebiCheck payment system,” the SARB said.

The central bank added said that the AC/DebiCheck project is an initiative of the collections industry that ensures the safety and efficiency of the NPS, and the mitigation of rogue and fraudulent behavior in the collections system.


Read: Absa launches QR payments

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