Community

The bank in question was Barclays. Clarkson claims: "The bank cannot find out who did this because of the Data Protection Act."

Which seems a strange thing to say - what's the connection between the DPA and ID fraud in this instance? 

Interesting point, Sriram. Similar problems of abuse by fraudsters have bedevilled the growth of anonymous digital cash systems such as e-Gold. I wonder if anybody in the social lending community can set us straight on the KYC controls in place to prevent abuse of their business models by the criminal underworld?

Sod's Law is the distinctly unscientific phrase commonly used for explaining why the toast always lands buttered side down. The BBC pooh-poohs the idea and instead claims that the answer lies in simple physics. The full-glass-of-wine-in-the-laptop scenario is down to a combination of bad luck and poor risk management. Now, where did I leave that cup of tea...

I'd like to book a table for the awards ceremony (NB - payment conditional on our not winning the downtime award).

Yes, the NatWest device is supplied by Xiring. Both Barclays and NatWest are complying with the broad guidelines agreed by umbrella payments body Apacs for using Chip and PIN online - essentially they've designed an Eftpos terminal for consumer use at home. Fine in theory, but it doesn't play very well with the average online banking consumer, who would typically expect to be able to perform routine transactions while at work or travelling away from home without the hassle of lugging around a card reader everytime they leave the house. I'm beginning to think HSBC and Abbey National had the right idea when they decided to go their own way and opted out of the national push for Chip and PIN online.

The Finextra news desk tends to take a lot of these survey-style reports with a pinch of salt. Those that ask too many leading questions, or feature small or self-selecting samples tend to get passed over - and believe me, there's a lot of this junk research about.

While we're not too keen on Gartner's penchant for extrapolation  - which produces the headline-pleasing multi-million dollar loss figures - the sample size is bigger than average, and the questions leave little to interpretation.

All the same, I've got agree with your general drift. Too many research houses seem to come up with a crowd-pleasing headline and then frame the research to deliver the requisite results.

Gartner has been had up by this Community in the past for some of its general purpose research notes on MiFID and M&A activity in the sector, among other things.

Glad to see the Community being used as a forum to question and challenge assumptions. Keep up the good work.  

Jan-Oloff, welcome to the Finextra community. Your comments on the A&L strategy are interesting and perceptive.

We recently received a research note from Celent, which identifies pre-paid cards as a major opportunity for disintermediation in the banking sector, with non-bank competitors tapping the market as a means to provide financial services to the unbanked sector of the population.

"The nontraditional/nonbanks have realized that a bank account can actually be broken down into two major components: one is the actual account, and the other is a wide variety of value-added, potentially fee-based ancillary products/ services, such as debit cards, bill pay, direct deposit, etc. Nontraditional/nonbanks also offer ATM withdrawals, mobile account access, international remittance, savings features, and overdraft protection."

The report, which looks at the US market, concludes that banks have yet to pursue the growth potential of general purpose reloadable cards for the unbanked population, which Celent estimates as an untapped US$192 billion market.

It would indeed seem that the approach adopted by A&L would enable the bank to take an agile approach to this market opportunity while skirting the regulatory constraints - and any negative old-school banking connotations - that might encumber traditional deposit takers. 

Well we did run a story on solar-powered ATMs for installation on the beach back in 2003. It was only a proof-of-concept although the NCR people supplied us with a pic of a machine in action. Given the current interest in environmentally-friendly banking, maybe this is an idea who's time has come.

Well, according to a report out this week by The Global Action Plan, the global IT sector is responsible for about two per cent of human carbon dioxide emissions a year - on a par with the aviation industry. One individual server has the same carbon footprint as an SUV doing 15 miles to the gallon. I wonder if Google - with its righteous 'do no evil' creed - has a programme in place to offset its emissions?

The iPod's a bit of a red herring. My 15-year old son has both an iPod and an MP3 player on his mobile phone. The mobile's the one he carries around all the time. In the future, I'd expect to see stand-alone iPod users gravitate to richer devices like the iTouch and ultimately the iPhone.

And, while there are many economic disincentives for the banks in the mobile payments space, you have to ask: Can they afford not to get involved?