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This is a great concept that I can see being applied as a marketing tool for University sports and Pro sports venues with re-usable drink cups with your team logo and the contactless payment chip embedded - you could set up self serve soda and beer machines....

I believe that in order for these platforms to be successful it needs to be intuitive to the user and not make them work too hard for the results offered by the tool. There has to be an integrated gamification aspect to the tool as well as a rewards program to help them want to spend the time interacting with it.  For example why not provide a tool that helps you save for vacation and as incentive the tool will provide the user with a percent match as they reach milestones and use preferred partners to help satisfy thier needs. Win Win...  Without the gamification and incentives you will only appeal to those people that enjoy using these types of tools like power Quicken users which will provide you with a user base that will plateau rather quickly. 

This provides a great use case for Financial Institutions to use their own branded top level domain or as nick points out the new .bank gTLD. NAB owns .NAB and has delegated the string according to ICANN. If they had switched the e-mail domain to .NAB instead of .com this may have been avoided. 

Who better than banks to secure that identity. Chris Skinner had a few great points on how banks in the future will in turn not only manage money and transactions but also manage data and data transactions in a secure fashion. I would assume that the mobile phone in this case would just be the presentation / interaction layer with no stored data on the device but rather a secure token based exchange to view the data on the device.    

It is likely that the consulting firms provided substantial value based on the engagement. The engagement is where the request for solving a problem is fleshed out and in the case of the instruments of the crisis the engagement probably had something to do with new ways to increase revenue.

If this was the case, before the market tanked the financial institutions that implemented recommended strategies from the consulting firms likely made billions as indicated by the bubble prior to the crash. I will also wager that the consulting firms likely provided a risk profile along with the opportunity profile on final recommendation. It would be up to the financial institution to manage the risk against the returns if they implemented the consulting firms' advice. I assume that risk was set aside as a result of the massive amount of return being generated prior to the crash - pour the coals to it and engine be damned mentality.

It is funny but the link you included ow.ly is from Libya so I did not click it. Are you testing us Uri? Just kidding - I don't like those URL masking tools as they feel very uncomfortable sometimes.

PFM sites access online banking in one of two ways:

·      OFX gateway - Example Quicken / Money clearly bank enabled for fee access or free

·      Automated login where user provides online banking credentials inclusive of UID / Password - For sites with multifactor the automated login will screen scrape and or replicate the multifactor credential and then allow the user to authenticate real time via the automated login

The weakest link in the chain is the end user and the majority of fraud happens due to lack of end user education on how to protect from fraud. Still the perception in the public is that the financial institution (FI) is always at fault as outlined in the case. This perception should factor in to the FI's risk strategy and included in steps created to build the trust model. The FI can never do enough on the customer’s behalf and must always be an advocate where security is involved.

It can get out of hand as it is in the UK where you have to swipe the card to do anything within online banking - this is nuisance territory, so there is a fine line when it comes to the end user experience and overkill in trying to protect them.

iPad will be much cheaper and likely accomplish the same goals.

Sorry to hear about your struggles, keep positive! However, I think the comments and your story really highlights the fact that the white collar workforce is going through the same shift that the blue collar workforce went through 20 to 30 years ago in the United States.

There are many interesting predictions for the future of the modern workforce and I personally believe that companies will begin shifting towards video conferencing and home based work arrangements as the technology becomes more and more efficient and cost effective. I also believe there will be a reconfiguring of pay scale as a result of these changes due to business overhead being reduced and companies using that capital for business opportunities versus paying for employees based in high cost work areas. 

The corporate world will likely also place more emphasis on the highest quality lowest cost worker which could be geographically located anywhere in the world. Competition for jobs will basically go global - and the question will be if the US labor force can compete? Smaller player entrepreneurs like you will also play a big part in saving local economies and local workforces.

We should all get back to making business decisions based on hard facts and stop trying to twist the data to meet agendas -ie wealth redistribution, higher taxes, fake exchanges - carbon offset credits (can you say Enron).  Mis-representation of facts, exploitation, and creative accounting is part of what caused the financial crisis. Take reducing paper - there is a great cost savings business case there and it does not need the hype of "Climate Change" to sell the idea. If we become better with the usage of facts and ethical business practices we wont need the hollywood factor to sell our ideas and innovate.