Community

Algorithmic trading is generally used for proprietary trading. Where the securities firm is executing buy and sell orders on behalf of customers - in a business that constitutes a majority of trading flows today - I am not sure how this will pan out: Will robots talk to human beings on the other end of the phone? Or, is there a similar prediction that robots will take over from humans at pension funds, municipalities and other investing firms ('clients')? 

I wouldn't bet my last dollar on that - historically, there seems to be a strong preference for addressing symptoms rather than eliminating root causes. 

As a provider of a business card QR code solution, we find that the use of QR codes by advertisers is on the rise sharply but their adoption by consumers is still quite weak. Like @Finextra Member, we also notice that the need for downloading and installing a QR Code Reader App on mobile phones is a major barrier for adoption. We've seen adoption improve when the QR code clearly describes what to expect by scanning it as well as links to landing pages, special offers and discount coupons rather than to the homepage of websites, most of whose URLs can be typed in relatively easily into a mobile browser. 

One of the largest cyberfrauds in the USA - the so-called Onwuhara HELOC Fraud - was apparently solved after a massive investigation that was launched when the fraudsters had unwittingly plied their trade on one Robert "Duke" Short, a former U.S. Treasury agent and Treasury Department's national chief of investigations. Reporting on the story, this FORTUNE article commented, "He was ... the wrong man to hit".

Hopefully, these skimmers might similarly realize that Jenny Durkan "was the wrong woman to hit".

It's so ironical that these fraudsters steal someone's identity but don't really "get" who that somone is!

Some people might push through a transaction on a mobile channel at first pass to avoid the pain of repeating it, whereas others might abandon the channel altogether due to the friction it poses. For me, VbV and other forms of 2FA were the last straw in my use of mobile payments: I've gone back to Internet-based ePayments or checks. IMHO, it makes sense to compare conversions and shopping cart abandonments only among channels having similar transaction volumes. With m-commerce accounting for less than 1% of retail sales (according to figures for the US market, all forms of remote channels contribute to less than 8% of revenues), that scenario is a long way off.  

While I like the convenience of looking up my account balance from my mobile phone, I fear that fraud mitigation will erect so many hoops for me to jump that I might eventually prefer to drop into the branch or ATM instead. In the case of payments, I think the bad guys have already won: Two-factor authentication on a mobile phone was the last straw. I've gone back to ePayments and checks. Therefore, I agree with your prediction around how "a general climate of insecurity around financial technology" can be "very bad news" for NextGen payment methods.

However, given the current state of financial technology, I spot more than one pair of mutually-exclusive-and-collectively-exhaustive attributes among convenience, speed, security, efficiency, service, and ease of use! Not sure if this is an aspirational list at this point or are there examples of any banks that have actually managed to deliver all of this in a single payment solution?

@Bo H:

A good portion of cross-border B2B payments happens via TARGET2, which uses ISO20022 as well. You can correct me if I am wrong, but I think the SCT alignment benefit you've highlighted is equally applicable for TARGET2 messages. This provides one more reason why e-invoicing should follow ISO20022 standards.  

An analyst report on Retail Currency Management technology preempted skepticism for the very concept of currency by pointing out that checks were supposed to replace cash decades ago.

As the recent reversal in the case of 'chequeless' in UK illustrates, cashless, chequeless and many other 'less'es can happen a lot faster if only the drivers changed from 'cut costs for payees' to 'add convenience, security, etc. for payors." Where service providers can pass on costs to their customers, they have a perverse incentive to let costs remain high and the status quo is unlikely to change for a very long time. On the other hand, email and a few other disruptive technologies have shown that it is possible to bring about massive shifts in consumer behavior in less than 10 years by being oriented at the consumer. Judged by this yardstick, contactless cards probably have the best shot at the 'currency killer' title. 

@Mike K:

Like you, I've worked in a professional capacity to provide ePayment solutions. However, when it comes to my personal life, I haven't found a more convenient alternative to checks because of the high degree of friction involved in most current forms of ePayments. I've written about them on my personal blog on several occasions. Suffice to say that they revolve around inadequate field lengths for narrations, anxiety in entering the beneficiary account number, and so on. 

Props for hitting the nail on the head when you say "The reason the UK initiative failed is because no adequate alternatives were developed." I've voiced a similar view on Finextra and believe that there's no point in blaming the common man for choosing checks as the path of least resistance. I share your opinion that solution has to come from banks and payment solutions providers and not the government. 

Great post, that too in an off-the-beaten-track area of sales. We come across a lot of companies who mistakenly believe that product knowledge and / or domain expertise are the most important prerequisites for a salesperson only to realize a few months / years later that selling involves, well, selling, a skill that goes far beyond product or domain.