Community

Stolen FROM not BY RSA surely?

Back in the day we always looked for stake, liquidity and profitability in assessing any business. Unfortunately EBITDA is not really a measure of profitability and "EBITDA Profitability" doesn't mean that an organisation is making profits. Even in the digital age cashflow is king so I hope Monitise is targeting Pre Tax Profits rather that EBITDA.  (Earnings before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortisation).

Yes when the presentation says that "Key components of Batch Transformation plan complete" and there is a batch processing problem, you do have to wonder.

Is it the plan that is complete and not the actions?

On the face of it wonderful but I assume female account holders wil not want to use these lest it is evidence of them driving illegally.

So what do we mean by a "consistent customer experience" anyway? In the past with batch processing and no real time transactions customers could get a different view of their accounts from different systems. This clearly isn't acceptable.

It is quite different however to have the facility to undertake a full range of transactions across all channels and I'm not sure that this has ever been what customers have demanded or expect. From the description of "consistent customer experience" however this seems to be what is being suggested.

Customers want to be able to do what they need to in a way that is convenient to them. That's not the same as having a consistent customer experience or is it?

Correction -António Horta-Osório is Group Chief Executive not Chairman. 

One aspect of the split is also likely to cause long term confusion. It also represents a significant change. In the past a sorting code for Lloyds always began with 30 and a code for TSB began with 77. The "random" nature of the branches chosen  to transfer means that this simple rule no longer applies. 

We have  seen the start of accont number portability.

They should have been able to forsee day one demand though but like the Northern Rock system crash no one seems to build for that capacity. 

It would seem that Banks and merchants may need to consider the political risks of card networks domiciled in particular countries. Both MasterCard and Visa International are US domiciled whereas Visa Europe is not.

The recent revelations about PRISM suggest that the focus of US authorities is on encrypted communication of non US nationals. It is not therefore surprising that US domiciled networks may feel obliged to limit support to services that anonymise internet traffic.

Visa Europe however, which is a separate entity not domiciled in the US,will not be under the same compulsion. 

I think we need to remember that the embargo against Cuba is a unilateral one by the United States against a sovereign state and member of the UN. The fact that legitimate trade between parties in the UK is frustrated by this is a warning of the potential dangers of using payment systems which are global rather than local. The increasing use of globalised and cloud based payment systems mean that transactions do not take place locally but are routed through different countries and are subject to laws of third party states.

Financial Services organisations should consider the risks of relying on globalised payment systems but as the balance of trade shifts it is to be hoped that we will see the emergence of regional and super regional payment systems which are able to offer an alternative.

The ability to route transactions to avoid blockages in the way that the internet does should be given greater priority when constructing systems.

I for one was pleased to buy some Cuban coffee when I heard about this.

This seems to be restricted to Corporate cardholders based in the US. It's certainly not available to download from Google Play in the UK.

Apart from having concerns about the security implications of account data being shared and held in a single database where it is most vulnerable to attack the suggestion that Metro is the first new Bank in the UK for 100 years is really just propoganda from Metro.

National Girobank and the numerous building societies (Abbey National, Halifax, Alliance & Leicester, Nationwide etc.) which began offering banking services all qualify as new banks although admittedly none of them were start ups from the ground up.

Banking is certainly about trust so whether people really want a brand new start up as opposed to a business they know diversifying into banking is open to question.

People will switch if the offer is good enough but the sharing of everyone's account data merely to facilitate a small percentage to switch doesn't seem sensible.

A better idea might be a service for customers to be able to announce their wish to find a new banker and permission to do a credit check. Banks could then bid for their business giving rise to real competition.