digital

Meta will surpass Google in digital advertising for the first time in history

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That Google is the queen of online advertising is one of the great constants of the Internet, but everything indicates that the reign is approaching its end. If the predictions come true, for the first time in history, Meta will be the company that generates the most advertising revenue. Projections. At the moment the surprise has not occurred, but the projections of the advertising analysis firm Emarketer are clear: Meta is going to snatch the throne of online advertising from Google in 2026. Specifically, they project that Meta will earn 243.46 billion dollars from advertising, while Google will earn 239.54 billion. Why is it important. Google’s dominance in the online advertising market was absolute. In fact, that domain has been in the regulators’ crosshairs for years and It has become very expensive for Google. Meta’s surprise, although not by a huge difference, is confirmation that the internet has been reconfigured with social networks and that the cake is much more distributed. Considering that Google has built its empire on the foundation of online advertising, it is even more relevant. The Meta Boost: AI. Meta has a portfolio of products with millions of users such as Instagram, Facebook, Threads and WhatsApp. According to Emarketer, the company has been “incredibly patient” in building solid usage habits in its user base before introducing ads. But what has caused this acceleration has been the integration of AI in content recommendation systems. This has allowed them to increase the viewing time of Reels by 30%, which translates into more advertising and therefore more income, specifically they are expected to reach the 50,000 million only with Reels. Goal Advantage+. It is the suite with AI that Meta offers advertisers. In addition to offering the platform to advertise, Meta also provides a ton of tools ranging from advertising actions to the creation of the ads themselves with generative audio, text and video AI. According to the brand’s results, revenue from video generation reached $10 billion in the last quarter of 2025. It was seen coming. It is not something that happened overnight, but rather The change has been in the works for years.. The displacement of searches was moving to other specialized platforms such as Amazon, Instagram or TikTok. With the emergence of AI, the landscape has become even more fragmented: with chatbots that provide answers to many user queries without us going through the classic search engine. Google is no longer the ‘default’ when doing a search, especially for younger generations who prefer audiovisual content. OpenAI enters the business. A few days ago we talked about OpenAI’s ambitious plans for its newly launched advertising business. The company hopes that, by 2030, they will have generated $100 billion with ads on ChatGPT, that’s nothing. It is still a much smaller amount than those managed by Meta or Google in a year, but it is enough for the impact to be noticeable. With social networks the exodus of searches began and perhaps we are facing the second great displacement. Time will tell. Image | Xataka, with Gemini In Xataka | The US has just opened a new wound in the Google empire: the justice system declares part of its advertising business illegal

clone humans using digital avatars

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Big tech companies are clear that, to promote their AI services, need content creators. At the same time, a good part of content creation goes through influencers created with AI. In case we thought that the loop couldn’t be solved, there are companies obsessed with achieving another goal: that content creators can create their own content creators… with AI. Heygen. If you’re not into the world of digital avatars, Heygen may not sound familiar to you, but the Los Angeles-based company is reliving the ChatGPT moment, but with avatars. Founded in 2020 as MovioLab, with Joshua Xu as CEO and a valuation of more than $500 million, Heygen competes head-to-head with giants like runway e ElevenLabs in the generative video space. Avatar V. Heygen has been obsessed with creating the best avatar model for years. And this week they published what, according to them, is the most advanced model in the world, Avatar V. They have data to support it, since as the company shows in a 30 page paperthe company has solved micro-expressions, gestures and lip synchronization (especially at the rhythm level) better than the rest. There is a real war between American and Chinese companies over digital avatars. a real war. As the paper shows, Heygen is not alone. Kling AI, Veo 3, OmniHuman, Seedance… Some of the most relevant companies worldwide are betting on the generation of avatars. And it’s not a random whim. Heygen has more than 40,000 companies paying for corporate video generation using avatars. The barrier to entry is falling lower and lower, the savings compared to productions with influencers are quantifiable, and production times are compressed from weeks to minutes. The key is to offer the most competitive model and an interface that works at the drop of a hat. What’s coming. Currently, avatars work with a handicap: their latency. The direction set by the paper is clear: solve this problem to achieve an avatar connected to LLMs in order to maintain conversations in real time (meetings, interviews, conferences…). The avatar industry is still emerging, but winning it is essential for a goal that AI Big Tech wants in the future: for AI to stop being a chatbot and become as close to a person as possible. In Xataka | How to create a character in ChatGPT and Gemini to use it in all the images you make with artificial intelligence

They are not more taxes, they are updating them in the new digital economy

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On March 12, it was published in the Official State Gazette the resolution which approves the general guidelines of the Annual Tax and Customs Control Plan of 2026. The text does not announce any new taxes, any additional fees and any direct obligations for the average citizen. What it does do is much more relevant for the fiscal control of Spaniards: the Treasury is updating the digital economy that citizens were already using. The Tax Agency has expanded the amount of information it receives on how money moves in the digital economy: mobile payments, neobank accounts and Fintech platforms or sales on second-hand platforms. The difference is not what you will pay in taxes, but how much the treasury now knows about your income and the new ways to receive it. ​New financial information. The most important novelty of Plan 2026 is not regulatory, but informative, and has raised a lot of controversy even before coming into force. Starting this year, the Tax Agency will have information every month on the ownership of bank accounts and also on the income obtained by businessmen and professionals who use any collection management system through POS cards and payments associated with mobile phone numbers. This directly includes payments through Bizum. That is, the Treasury now equates Bizum to credit cards. What has changed is which platforms are now required to report to the Treasury. Previously, this duty fell mainly on traditional banking entities. But the economy it is becoming more digital and neobanking, Fintech and digital payment systems platforms have increasingly become most common among Spaniards. Therefore, the Treasury has now extended that obligation also to companies in the new digital economy. All of them must periodically report data on certain professional profiles or important financial movements, which gives the Treasury a much more complete and updated view of money flows that were previously off its radar. Neobanks under the radar. The Plan dedicates a specific section to controlling the activity of digital financial entities, or neobanks. The BOE text recognizes that these entities, which offer services through technological platforms in many cases without physical presence in Spain, have transformed the banking landscape and pose challenges for tax control. The concrete response of the plan is that the checks will be focused on those taxpayers in which improper use of neobank accounts is detected to hide income or assets abroad. The objective declared by the Treasury is to improve the traceability of operations in a digital and cross-border environment, without implying any direct restriction or penalty for the user for the simple fact of having an account in one of these neobanks such as Revolut. or N26. Wallapop and the DAC7: selling online leaves a tax trail. Electronic commerce and sales platforms are another priority objective of the 2026 Annual Tax and Customs Control Plan. The BOE itself states that the operations carried out through these platforms sale of items between individualslike Wallapop or Vinted, have grown by double digits between 2020 and 2025, and that its trading volumes have doubled in that period. This growth is precisely what justifies the Treasury pay more attention to what happens in them. The tool that makes this control possible is the European DAC7 directivewhich forces platforms like Wallapop to communicate to the Treasury the income that their sellers obtain from selling products, providing services or renting goods through these apps. With that information, the treasury can compare the income that a person declares with what the platform has reported, and open an investigation if the numbers do not add up. ​Individual or professional: the distinction that changes everything. The new Treasury measures are aimed at controlling fraud by obtaining more information from the platforms that move money. That does not mean that the platform must send information about all its users. You should only do it from those to use them professionally or who, although they are not professionals, have a very intensive activity (hidden economy). If you use Wallapop to sell your bicycle or Vinted to get rid of clothes that you no longer wear, this measure does not affect you. However, if you have a clothing store and sell through this platform without declaring income, the Treasury will knock on your door. The same happens with payment platforms. If you use Bizum to pay your share of dinner to a friend (or have it paid for you), Treasury will not receive information about these movements between individuals. On the other hand, for self-employed professionals and companies the scenario has changed. The Tax Agency will receive the data on what they charge by card or Bizum. This allows you to compare that income with what you declare in the quarterly VAT more efficiently and quickly than before. In Xataka | Income Simulator 2025: how to use it to know if the declaration you make in 2026 will pay or return Image | Revolut

How to create an excel with artificial intelligence where you can add the expenses of your digital purchase receipts

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Let’s explain to you how to create a spreadsheet with your expenses using artificial intelligence. Specifically, what we are going to do is put all your purchase receipts in a folder, and have the AI ​​read them, extract the totals, write them down in the spreadsheet and then add the total. It seems complex, but it is easier than it seems. For our example we are going to use the PDF tickets that are sent to you by email when you configure the Mercadona digital ticketalthough you can also use photographs of tickets. For the spreadsheet we are going to use LibreOffice, as it is a free and open source alternative to Office. To carry out the actions we will use Claude Coworkthe AI ​​assistant of Claude that can do actions on your computer. The negative part is that To use this tool you must have a paid account in this artificial intelligence chat, but the positive part is how much you can later do with it. There are workflow tools that allow you to automate this and do it online, but we are going to start by explaining this simpler method because it is all local, within your computer, and sharing less data with third parties. Make preparations first It is important to be organized when carrying out this task. Therefore, what we are going to do is go to the file explorer on our computer and create a folder. In my case I have called it Tickets. Inside, we will create a subfolder where you can put the digital tickets which we will call “Ticket PDFs”, and then the spreadsheet file which we will call “Total Purchases”. We will also create the basic structure of the spreadsheetso that it will then be easier for us to describe to the AI ​​what we want. On this sheet I have included the date, the total of the ticket, and then a column to add the link to the PDF file for each one. Here, you will be able to customize this as you need. Now simply Put the tickets in PDF inside the folder that we have created to store the tickets. You can do this by hand with the ones you have, and then update it with the ones that arrive later, because we will also tell you how to ask the AI ​​to update everything. This technique has many variants. For example, adding a specific column in the spreadsheet you can also add the name of the supermarket in order to manage the expenses of several of them, or make a different sheet for each one within the same file. You can make things as complex as you want. Now ask AI to do the work for you Now it’s time to get to work. Let’s open the Claude application on the computer and choose the option cowork. Here, the first thing will be click on the option Work in a folder. When you do this, you will have to choose the folder where you have included the subfolder with the PDFs and where you have created the spreadsheet file. This way the AI ​​will work only within this space without touching the rest of the files on the computer. Once you have done this, tap write a prompt asking it what you want it to dowhich in this case is asking it to read the PDFs with the tickets, extract the information and put it in the place you want within your spreadsheet. I have used this prompt, where I also specify the columns where each content goes: I want you to analyze the content of all the PDFs in the “Ticket PDFs” folder. These are purchase tickets. In all of them, I want you to extract both the date of the ticket and the total you have spent and put them in the “Date” and “Total (€)” columns of the “Total purchases.ods” file. Within this file, I also want you to create a link in the PDF Link column that, when clicked, opens the PDF file it belongs to. This prompt You can modify it depending on what your spreadsheet is like.but always specifying in which column each item goes, or on which page of the spreadsheet if you have created one for each supermarket. You can even make a sheet for the totals, and ultimately ask them to use any of Excel functions or the program you are going to use. Now, you have to wait a few minutes for Claude to process your request and complete the task. When you do, you will be able to enter the file you created before, and you will see that it has updated it. You can make changes to the file for font size or whatever you want, and Claude will then take that into account. You can also tell the AI ​​if it has done something wrong, such as not including links, so it can correct and add it. Now, you can ask him to do extra work like adding a column below with the total. And then, When you add more files you can ask it to update the file reviewing the new PDFs that you have added and adding the missing ones to the list. And that’s it. With all this you will have a spreadsheet that you can update every time you add more tickets. You can also ask him to do it by reading the content of photos, and other tickets that you also have in PDF. In Xataka Basics | Claude: 23 functions and some tricks to get the most out of this artificial intelligence

validates the digital professional card as an accreditation document to practice

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The highest judicial authority in Mexico has settled a debate that generated some confusion among workers, employers and even institutions: What happens with the digital professional card. Recently have ruled in favor of its validity when presented as the only document, being as valid as the physical one. Below these lines we tell you all the details. Why does it matter? On January 15, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) resolved the Contradiction of Criteria 164/2025 and confirmed that the electronic professional card has full legal validity to accredit the beginning of a profession in Mexico. For years it has been a confusing situation in work environments and institutions, even generating unjustified rejections in hiring processes, labor procedures and records. And there were employers and institutions that required physical support out of habit or ignorance, without any legal support to do so. What exactly does the resolution say? The full court established Three points that should be clear: First: the digital ID does not need a photograph or signature to have legal effects, because its function is not to identify a person, but to prove that they are authorized to practice their profession. Second: the electronic format issued by the General Directorate of Professions of the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) meets all current legal requirements, since the regulations at no time impose mandatory physical characteristics for this document. Third: no public or private institution can require the paper version as a condition for hiring or recognizing a professional. Doing so has no legal basis. What this document does not do. However, the SCJN also explained an important nuance that may lead to confusion: the professional ID, whether digital or physical, It is not an official ID. It does not prove identity, only that the person is authorized to start a profession. This means that for procedures that require identification as a person (opening a bank account, voting, signing contracts before a notary…) it will continue to be necessary to present a separate identity document. How to verify its authenticity. If an employer or institution needs to verify that an ID is legitimate, the official mechanism is to consult the ID number directly in the National Registry of Professionalsthe system of the General Directorate of Professions. There is no need to request an additional physical document or request photographs. What changes in practice. For professionals, the ruling eliminates that confusion that has existed for years, since the ID downloaded from the SEP platform It has exactly the same legal weight as any printed version. For recent graduates, it simplifies accreditation procedures and eliminates unnecessary costs and management times. For employers and institutions, the SCJN resolution clarifies doubts and turns the digital document into a mandatory recognition, not an option. Rejecting it or conditioning a contract on having to present the format on paper no longer has legal protection. In Xataka | Mexico has the most powerful dubbing industry in Latin America. And now it has a serious problem: AI

It is a paradise for digital nomads

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It is nothing new that Malaga city and Malaga province are magnificent places to spend your holidays, with towns such as Torremolinos, Fuengirola, Marbella, San Pedro de Alcántara, Benalmádena, Frigiliana, Nerja or Mijas as prominent tourist destinations of a lifetime. Now, Benarrabá probably does not appear in any ranking: it only has 452 inhabitants and has no coast, since it is in the heart of the Serranía de Ronda (another place worth visiting). Málaga city and Benarrabá are night and day. In the 21st century, the population statistics have the arrow pointing down. Currently, its population density is of 18.35 inhabitants per square kilometeralmost 100 times less than the 1516.69 inhabitants/km² of Malagathe provincial capital and an entire technological cluster within Spain: it is home to one of the leading AI companies within the EU (freepik), Total Virus and even Google has a center there. Between one municipality and another, 133 kilometers and approximately an hour and a half by car. To the nearest airports, (Gibraltar and Malaga), one hour and one hour and a half respectively. There is only one bus daily to larger municipalities such as Ronda or Algeciras. It is not that it is next to a big city (although the distances are relative) and it is well connected precisely. Obviously, there is also a huge difference in the price of housing. Due to its small size, Benarrabá makes it difficult to find rental data (there is none), but in terms of sales prices, it goes from 3,802 euros per square meter in the capital to €220/m² in the aforementioned town. according to Indomio data. Benarrabá is a coliving town. If we take a look at your economic statisticswe will see that sectors such as agriculture, transport, construction or hospitality appear, but no trace of tourism. However, in 2025 alone, this small municipality welcomed 52 digital nomads from more than 19 different countries, more than 10% of its census population. What does Benarrabá have to attract digital nomads?. An infrastructure that greatly simplifies the process of going to spend some time there knowing that you are going to find accommodation that is rented by the week (with prices ranging from 22 euros/day in a shared room and 35 euros/day for an individual), sociocultural activities and a hospitable neighborhood and spaces for teleworking with 1GB of symmetrical fiber, call rooms, good views and specialty coffee that can be accessed 24/7. What is Rooral?. In one word: Roorala coliving project that is defined as a rural activator and in which both the Benarrabá City Council and the local community participate. The idea is to partner to create a coliving and coworking experience in towns located in unpopulated areas to welcome those people who want to telework and integrate into the life of the municipality. According to La Opinión de Málagathe average stay of these teleworkers is 24 days. In that period of time, they revitalize the life of the municipality and revitalize the economy. Benarrabá is the first permanent base of the project and it is no coincidence. Juan Barbed, co-founder of Rooral, account how when his grandmother died and he had to return to town, he met numerous strangers who welcomed him with open arms. On the one hand, cities are full of stress and loneliness (not to mention sky-high prices), on the other, many towns in Spain are disappearing. He connected the dots to combat this imbalance: remote work. And it’s been three years now. Things to do in Benarrabá. Rooral You don’t have a town? Now yes. The co-founder explains for the Malaga environment that for those people accustomed to living in large cities, settling in Benarrabá is a surprising experience due to the closeness and human warmth: “An emotional bond is generated that is difficult to forget and the desire of many of them to return to Benarrabá in the future.” It marks some people so much that one of the artists who lived there has painted portraits of 45 neighbors, recorded a documentary and created a map of points of interest. In Xataka | Rural Spain does not give up: digital nomads, remote work and new business opportunities to repopulate towns In Xataka | Home and work in the town: Spain increasingly offers more aid for young people to access rural housing Cover | Albertoac1990 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 and Annie Spratt

disconnect from the Internet with a digital iron curtain

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Imagine a world without Internet It’s not that strange. In October, an AWS outage left the Internet shivering. In December, with Cloudflare sneezehalf the Internet collapsed. These are just two examples that show that, At any tremor, the network wobbles. And they are specific cuts, but imagine that there are 655 cases in a month. Or until 2,099. If they are very specific figures, it is because that is what is happening in Russia. And not because of an error or a server crash. But because Russia is experimenting to completely disconnect from the global Internet. RuNet. We told it a few years ago. The Russian Ministry of Statistics noted that the Government had instructed all state sites and services to change their domain names. From a global one to a Russian one. It coincided with Ukraine asking that Russia was disconnected from the network, and that was it: mere coincidence. According to the rulers, disconnect of the Internet responds to a strategy of defense against cyber attacks (Russia is a power in this sense). According to others, it has more to do with implementing a filtering system similar to the one China operates with its ‘Great Firewall‘. The truth is that we knew this as ‘RuNet’and the strategy that began step by step in 2019 is now colossal. The new normal. Throughout these years, Russia has been testing disconnection tests. 2025 has been a critical year in this sense, one in which administrations have repeatedly pulled the cable to test the system. They have even been given massive blackouts in regions such as Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia to test the stability of RuNet. In 2024 They tested in several regionsbut this year has been a ‘massacre’. In May of this year, on the eve of Victory Day40 regions were left without mobile communications. There were 69 “blackouts” of the network, but in June there were 655 and in July the figure increase to 2,099. It is estimated that it exceeds the number of outages in the entire world for a full year. Data packet loss reported on Cloudflare when Russia has pulled the cord Roskomnadzor. That’s a key name in this story. To ensure control over Internet access and consolidate it within the legal framework, the Russian government expanded the powers to Roskomnadzorthe state regulator. The entity has the ability to isolate and redirect traffic within Russia in the face of “specific threats” such as cyber attacks, critical infrastructure failures or loss of access to both domestic and foreign networks. They have the authority to issue binding orders to teleoperators, allowing them to disconnect Russia from the global Internet in an emergency, and in fact, in recent years the authorities consolidated more than half of Russian IP addresses in the hands of seven service providers who are clearly linked to the state. In the evidence This year, which has left regions without mobile Internet for up to two months, the narrative is defense. If the ukrainian war is that the rules have changed, but in 2025 in particular, lDrones and cyber attacks They have created a totally new battlefield. That is what they hide behind for some of these patterns of cuts, but the problem is that they are occurring in remote regions, such as Omsk, 2,500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. Lock. During these outages, users are not completely disconnected, but rather have limited access to websites that are on a government-approved whitelist. Anyone who is not there is blocked or penalized. YouTube is an exampleexperiencing a significant reduction in speed since summer of last year. Any service that uses Google caching is also being throttled. AND cloudflare It is also being penalized by Internet providers. From Cloudflare itself they affirmed this summer that only Russian users are allowed to upload the first 16 KB of any website. It is a limitation that affects 20% of the entire Internet and 16 KB is not even enough to upload a sad image. WhatsApp, Google Meet, FaceTime or Telegram also have been penalizedto the point that in October there were users who they complained because they did not receive confirmation SMS from those apps to create a new account. 2026 doesn’t look better. The Government has a solution: Max, a super app similar to China’s WeChat with messaging, calls, video, file sharing and banking operations option. With everything that this implies. And, if throughout 2025 new laws and articles have come into force to give more power to Roskomnadzor, on March 1, 2026, Decree No. 1667 will come into force, which will establish new rules for centralized network management, giving more power to the regulator and which will be in force until 2033. The decree will potentially give Roskomnadzor the ability to pull the cable permanently. For now, what has been experienced in recent years responds to different tests, but it is evident that Russia is preparing for this total disconnection and the creation of an Intranet. Much more controlled and to where VPNs to see what happens abroad are criminalized. In Xataka | The color of your Ethernet cable is not for decoration: it is a key visual language

Its digital notebook function is a big plus

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Until recently, those of us who enjoy making annotations in books (including yours truly) had a great handicap when it came to reading digitally, since we could not enjoy this option. But this changed with the arrival of Kindle Scribea electronic book reader which is also digital notebook and that has surprised me very pleasantly. Amazon Kindle Scribe (16GB) | Redesigned screen with uniform edges The price could vary. We earn commission from these links The perfect Kindle for those who love reading and writing The screen of this Kindle Scribe is one of its main assets. It has a diagonal of 10.2 inches and has a resolution of 300 dpi. Although if there is something that it is characterized by, it is the adjustable warm light that it integrates. This adapts to the environment and the moment in which you are using the device, something that seems like magic. The design of this Kindle Scribe is very light and you can easily operate it even with one hand (despite its large screen). This has made it one of my inseparable companions to keep me entertained during my travels. This electronic book reader from Amazon incorporates a premium pencil (with several spare tips), so you can comfortably use its touch screen. Thanks to this accessory, you will be able to make notes, underline and write as if you were doing it in a paper notebook, since the experience is very realistic. You may also be interested in these Kindle Amazon Kindle (16 GB), the lightest and most compact Kindle The price could vary. We earn commission from these links New Amazon Kindle Colorsoft: with 16 GB of storage The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Image | Fran León and Amazon In Xataka | Which Kindle to buy: buying guide with recommendations to get it right with Amazon e-book readers In Xataka | Amazon Kindle: guide with 27 functions and tricks to get the most out of your e-book in 2025

From today, Ryanair requires 100% digital boarding. It is the culmination of a strategy to trap us in its application

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The day has come. Ryanair only lets you board its planes with a digital card. The measure has been postponed for a few months but November 12 was finally the date on which this decision by the airline, which has raised some controversy and critical voices, was consolidated. Digital boarding. Showing your boarding pass on your mobile phone will be the only way to access Ryanair planes from today. The company claims that by issuing the digital boarding pass, what they call TED, 300 tons of paper are saved per year. This TED is available from the Ryanair application, once the passenger has checked in online prior to taking the plane. This card is available without a mobile data connection, so they ensure that you can access the plane if your mobile phone does not have data or the airport Wi-Fi is not fast enough. The big news is that, until now, it was possible to send a PDF to email from the application and from the browser. This PDF could be printed or simply stored on the mobile phone and brought onto the plane with it, “bypassing” the download of the application. What does Ryanair earn? That the client downloads its application where the company offers seat changes and, simply, facilitates the collection of supplements with added services. This has become the company’s great gold mine. It is, in fact, the only reason to make this decision. In Xataka Mobile have contacted the company to ask why this change and the last part of the answer is eloquent: “This transition, already adopted by almost 80% of Ryanair’s more than 207 million annual passengers, will offer a faster, smarter and more sustainable travel experience. In addition, it will make it easier for passengers to access a variety of innovative features within the app” In the video itself where they explain the change, they already point out that the user will have constant information during their flight, the allocation of the boarding gate… or the possibility of ordering food at your seat. And if… The company has opened a page question and answer website in which all the possible “what ifs” that we can think of are answered. All of them, yes, require billing in advance. For example: And if… I left my phone at home: you can request a free paper boarding pass at the airport, as long as you have completed the online check-in. And if… I lose my phone: same case as the previous one. And if… I lose my phone or I run out of battery after having passed the control: if we have passed the control it means that the passenger has already checked in. In that case, attention will be offered at the boarding gate. And if… I don’t have a smartphone: we will have to check in online beforehand and request a physical boarding pass at the airport. If we have not done it previously, we will have to pay the 55 euros that Ryanair charges for check-in at the airport. Is there some kind of advantage for the user? More or less. Until now, issuing the boarding pass cost 55 euros, whether or not we had done online check-in previously. With the change, Ryanair ensures that the issuance of the card will be free, as long as we have previously made the online check-in. Controversy. Since the measure will be announced in October 2024the voices opposed to the measure have multiplied. Facua has assured since then the measure is illegal as it is considered abusive. The organization defined the situation as follows: Mandating 100% digital boarding is “an especially burdensome clause for vulnerable groups (older people, passengers who, due to their disability or physical condition, have difficulties interacting with new technologies, etc.). These types of consumers usually need the attention and assistance of a third party to be able to carry out the procedures correctly. on-line. Likewise, in Xataka we already got in touch with the company to ask what would happen if a person wanted to print their boarding pass and access it with it, without using their mobile phone. So we didn’t know (nor did the company confirm) that they were going to remove the PDF. Now, the only way is to take a screenshot and print it. However, if someone wanted to go to this trouble, there was no solution offered for this case. Photo | Dan Barrett In Xataka | Ryanair has found a new formula to earn more per ticket: forcing you to board 100% digitally

Something big is coming in European money. The ECB has set a date for a key step towards the digital euro

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The European Central Bank has made a move in one of the most sensitive projects in its recent history. After two years of preparation, the organization has decided to move on to the next phase of the digital eurothe initiative with which it seeks to adapt public money to the era of electronic payments. It is not a launch, nor a final decision: if the European regulations are approved in 2026, there will be a pilot starting in 2027 and the Eurosystem wants to be ready for a possible first emission in 2029. The decision comes after a preparation stage started in November 2023in which the ECB and the national central banks defined the technical and operational pillars of the project. In these two years, progress was made in the draft of the operating regulations, in the selection of technological suppliers and in tests with market participants. Political momentum has also been key: euro leaders called at the October 2025 summit to accelerate work to ensure that Europe retains its own capacity in digital payments. A pilot to get out of paper. The announced step opens a phase aimed at validating that the system can work in practice, both from a technical point of view and from real use. The ECB talks about a pilot in which Banks, technology providers, businesses and consumers would participate, with tests on payments in everyday situations and security controls. The objective is to verify that the digital euro, if it exists, can operate reliably and offer a simple experience for the user. Despite the progress, this does not mean that the digital euro is ready for launch or that it will replace paper money. The institution emphasizes that the cash will continue to exist and that the project requires legislative support before any final decision. Furthermore, it is neither a decentralized token nor an experiment to displace the banking sector. The proposed architecture, they assure, maintains banks as the main access and operation channel for citizens and businesses. Three points before starting. The digital euro roadmap is supported by three conditions: legislative progress, technical validation and the formal decision of the ECB later. The European Regulation will establish the rights, limits and obligations of the system, including the way in which financial institutions participate. In parallel, the architecture will be deployed in modules to adjust development as results are obtained. Nothing in this phase implies committing unlimited resources or guarantees the final emission. A project that still needs to convince. Initial support for the digital euro is not homogeneous across Europe. In Germany, a survey prepared for the Bundesbank In April 2024 it showed that half of citizens “could imagine using it” and that 41% already knew about the project. In Spain, a study by Monitor Deloitte In 2024, it indicated that 61% would not adopt it for now, largely due to lack of knowledge and satisfaction with current methods. At European level, a survey published by BEUC In 2025, it indicated that privacy is a priority for 81% of those surveyed, along with security and the absence of commissions as essential elements. From now on, progress will be as technical as it is political. As we say, the ECB wants to have the pieces ready for a pilot in 2027 and to consider a possible initial emission in 2029, provided that the European regulation is approved and tests confirm its viability. The process will be gradual and reviewable, and therein lies its importance: Europe is preparing for an option that could expand its autonomy in payments Images | ECB | omid armin In Xataka | The world seemed unprepared for the end of cash. The digital euro makes it clear that yes

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