Finance 2.0

A community for discussing the application of Web 2.0 technologies to financial services.

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

UBank's Twitter offensive

At the risk of becoming a Twitter bore, here's another innovation from the land down under: NAB direct banking offshoot UBank is offering a free IGB USB flash drive to its first 1000 followers on Twitter. The social media-savvy bank has been twittering since October, and currently has over 300 followers. Paying for followers may not be the best wa...

06 May 2009 /retail

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

ANZ CEO announces resignation - on Twitter

Twitter ye not. Brian Hartzer, CEO of ANZ's Australian operations has just announced his resignation - on Twitter. In a valedictory tweet posted Monday, Hartzer says: "Folks, this is my last tweet as I've resigned to pursue an overseas opportunity. Thanks for your continued support for ANZ. All the best." The smart money says Hartzer is ...

05 May 2009 /retail

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Twitter and other banking fads

LloydsTSB's James Gardner has caused a bit of a stir with some provocative comments on his BankerVision blog about the value of Twitter to banks. The Twitterati don't take kindly to criticism (constructive or otherwise), as I discovered personally a few months back when I made the mild observation - in an otherwise flattering take on Twitter - th...

30 April 2009 /retail

Retired Member 

Facebook's Micropayment Non-Strategy

Rumors continue to swirl concerning the deployment of a Facebook payments system. Recently the company unveiled that it was beta testing (via the VentureBeat and Facebook networks) functionality which would enable users to engage in small transactions using Facebook Credits, the network's nascent virtual currency, via comments to news feed items. ...

28 April 2009 /payments

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Make love, not leverage

Twitter seems to be coming into its own as a medium for reporting fast-moving events. Up-to-the-minute citizen reportage on the G20 protest rally can be found here. This just in: Protestors urinating in the Royal Bank of Scotland. 'Well, we do own it', says one tweet. More coverage from the FT's team at http://twitter.com/g20ft. 'Make love, not l...

01 April 2009 /retail /wholesale

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

What's the point of Twitter?

So, everyone's a'flutter over Twitter? I wouldn't count on it. Here at Finextra we set up our own Twitter feed last year, just as an experiment. To set the ball rolling, we identified all Community members with a Twitter account and started following them. Over the past couple of months there's been a noticeable drop-off in tweets from individuals...

27 March 2009 /retail /wholesale

Retired Member 

Stimulus To The Heart - Boss writes to employees

This is good. It was sent to me by a close friend. It has been around a little but given the US employment figures is so true and such a WAKE UP call to Brown, Obama, Rudd and so many other world leaders it has to be read. A Boss Who Tells It like It Is Date: 4 February 2009 To All My Valued Employees, There have been some rumblings around the o...

10 March 2009

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Bank of America outs Twitter imposter

Bank of America twitterer David Knapp at BofA_help has outed an impersonator operating under the monicker bofabanker. The anonymous BofA imposter set up his Twitter account yesterday and claimed to be a bona fide staffer at the West Coast bank. Knapp contacted him online saying: "I work for Bank of America, please send me a DM so we can disc...

25 February 2009 /retail

Steve Ellis Founder at Finextra Research

Transparent Bank Corp.? Will it fly?

Couple of interesting, not unrelated stories. Mr Jeff Jarvis gets a knock back for a new style of bank while in Davos. Whereas Mr Barack Obama applies a salary cap to failed bank execs. Is there a common message being expressed here? I'm also seeing a lot more coverage for Zopa and its peers in the mainstream media in recent weeks. In part, I'd...

05 February 2009

Retired Member 

Instant messaging as a substitution for email

I can see a tendency of much wider use of IM than emails among the youngsters. It can be Windows Messenger, ICQ or Skype, but the Generation Y reach for it much sooner than opening an email program. The messages are delivered even if a friend is offline and there is a wide range of emoticons available to express feelings in short forms. And there ...

03 February 2009