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Trends in Financial Services

A community to discuss the future of financial services and any other interesting trends, strategies, ideas, views.

Hans Hagen

Hans Hagen Founder at Alphastrike

Dinosaur revival

Not too long ago, ATMs were predicted to suffer the same fate as dinosaurs. With the invention of payment cards of all sorts, increasing usage of cards as a cash substitute, and the introduction of cash back at point of sale, ATMs were predicted to suffer a slow death. Those predictions, however, failed to consider two key aspects of ATMs. First ...

/payments

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

The mobile wallet generation

Young people are almost as dependent on their mobile phones as they are on cash, according to new research commissioned by UK ATM network Link. The poll, conducted by YouGov among 2000 adults found that 18-24 year olds ranked cash and mobile access as 'basic necessities'. The survey results also showed that young adults would be more willing to go ...

/payments /retail

Hans Hagen

Hans Hagen Founder at Alphastrike

Never-ending battle

No industry observer is surprised by the reported rise in fraud committed abroad on UK cards. The perverse effect of harder-to-crack chip card technology is that fraud increases where chip cannot be used, by using cards with information obtained by skimming or other ways obtaining the information located on the mag-stripe on the back of the very ...

/payments

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Verified by Visa is easy target for scammers

Bank of America customers are the targets of a new phishing scam which uses the Verified by Visa anti-fraud programme as the bait to lure victims. “Your Bank of America card has been automatically enrolled in the Verified by Visa program,” one version of the email says. “To ensure your Visa card's security, it is important that you protect your ...

/security

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Like MasterCard meets PayPal without the charges

That's the opinion of Ted Leonsis, chairman of RevolutionMoney, describing the new RevolutionCard, which was released in the US today. The PIN-protected card offers a line of credit, $15,000 top-up capacity, ID-theft protection and interest rates pegged to the card holder's credit rating. It also promises to significantly undercut the hated inter...

/payments /retail

Retired Member

Retired Member 

More on the current opportunity for P2P lending

Paul writes about P2P lenders seeing a silver cloud in the sub prime mortgage crisis, and subsequent fall out. I wanted to expand a little, on why I at least, believe that to be true. Banks have many influences on their lending practices, andgenerally, only one of those influences is under the direct control of the borrower. That would be the borr...

/retail

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

P2P lenders see silver lining in credit crunch cloud

The credit crunch may be bad news for traditional banks, but the new breed of peer-to-peer lending operators are viewing the current liquidity crisis as a clear opportunity to take on more business. With traditional lenders tightening their loan criteria and dispensing with special introductory credit card rate offers and home equity loan options,...

/retail

Retired Member

Retired Member 

HSBC and Abbey are not lemmings on chip and pin

I applaud HSBC and Abbey National for not being lemmings on the European push to chip and pin for online banking. They are considering alternative methods for two factor authentication, that are both less intrusive for customers, and potentially more effective. Finextra: HSBC investigates 'out of band' authentication for Web users HSBC and Abb...

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Consultant banks: the new frontier?

Recently I answered a question on LinkedIn regarding the main drivers of growth in the operating models of financial services. Briefly, the question related to whether there are alternate models for managing the operations of financial services that go beyond the pursuit of efficiency, productivity, etc. I had then responded that the boutique ban...

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Web 2.0 buzzword watch

Investors Business Daily via CNNMoney comments on the use of Web collaboration tools such as RSS, Wikis and blogs in the business sector under the guise of a new business buzzword: Enterprise 2.0. It's the first time I've heard the term in general use, but it seems that I'm well behind the curve. The phrase was first coined by Andrew McAfee from H...

/retail /wholesale

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