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OMG don't do that! Blockchain app owners will say you're publishing #FakeNews!! They haven't figured out these things themselves!!!

At Least Paper Documents Are Exposed Only One At A Time!

...and language plays a very important - though often overlooked - role in a bank's attempt to be customer-centric. 

"...marketing relies on data analytics to determine who to target and how to target them. But then comes crafting of the actual message, which (mostly) consists of written words." ~ https://thefinancialbrand.com/77720/bank-credit-union-marketing-messages-communications/ via @FinancialBrand .

I was asked to answer the following question on Quora today: "Are there any online payment programs that don't take a percentage of sales?" I answered that there was none in my knowledge. Obviously you (probably) can't run a payment business profitably in that manner. But this got me thinking about my earlier comment that a new payment rail with 2X Rewards & 0.5X MDR can kill Card Networks overnight. Wonder why there isn't one like that. If startups can attract VC funding despite making whopping losses in so many other industries (e.g. ride share like Uber), why not in payments?

WSJ doesn't buy my argument about #WC2018. In a recent article, it echoes my aforementioned paraphrasing of Gary Lineker's famous saying thusly:

"Despite a bewildering proliferation of digital payments over the past 10 years, the old payment champions Visa & MasterCard continue to be the new payment champions because most new ways to pay for things still lead back to Visa and Mastercard." 

I recently paraphrased, on Twitter, a recent WSJ article thusly: 

Despite a bewildering proliferation of digital payments over the past 10 years, the old payment champions Visa & MasterCard continue to be the new payment champions because most "new ways to pay for things still lead back to Visa and Mastercard". 

Open Banking is supposed to be the answer for the supposedly chronic craving of consumers to get more value from their banking data. If the premise of Open Banking is right, it's human nature for consumers to not only know about Open Banking but also to be looking forward to it. More in this comment. If customers need to be educated about Open Banking, then Open Banking is Dead On Arrival. IMO, Open Banking Needs A Blockchain Boost.

All good points but, I'm afraid, many of these "security measures" have been exploited by fraudsters by now. e.g.

1. "go to websites via a search through Google". Sadly, 50% of search users can't differentiate between fakeable inorganic / ad and genuine organic search results and click on the fake ad by mistake. This method was exploited by fraudsters who recently launched a phishing attack on cryptowallet users and stole their cryptocoins. In another case, India's dairy giant Amul recently sent a legal notice to Google to remove fake ads for Amul Franchises. Many days after that, the fake ads can still be spotted on Google. Needless to say, Google makes money on those fake ads and has little incentive to pull down those ads.
2. "type it in". People make typos and fraudsters are waiting with fake websites with similar URLs.
3. "Look at the Website Address". When people click links in SMS messages on smartphones, the way mobile browsers work (e.g. Samsung Browser), they don't display the URL of the site opened by the click, so people can't look at the URLs.

Not saying we should give up but the above points highlight the need for a disruptive solution in this space. I've come across some attempts (e.g. McAfee SiteAdvisor) but none of them has been able to go mainstream because they seem to have their own shortcomings (e.g. slow speeds).  

TIL that MasterCard's new rule is only applicable for free trials of physical goods. Kate Fitzgerald predicts in PaymentsSource that MasterCard's move might spark consumer backlash, forcing the company to extend this rule to digital subscriptions as well. But, as things stand, it's only for physical goods. Maybe it's only me but I can't think of the last time I signed up for a free trial for a physical good. 

Cardholder-friendly move by MasterCard but, if Visa doesn't follow suit, Merchants could insist that trial signups must use only Visa credit cards. Already many of them don't permit free trial signup via debit cards or bank transfers, so what's one more exclusion, eh?