Thanks Steve - great summarisation. It was a while ago that I managed to get to Cartes, but this year might be a good one to re-visit.
06 Nov 2011 13:38 Read comment
Good debate. The part that caught my eye was the tendency to believe that this will lead to 'war of some sort' in Europe. Desperate times result in desperate measures, but as you say, I hope we've come further since the 30's to realise that war was not a solution. There are still enough mature heads to know that fighting for your country can be a mugs game and that even that measure is taken advantage of by a few at the deep expense of the many. Civil unrest yes, but war I hope never.
06 Nov 2011 13:28 Read comment
Wow, what a great blog. Covers a lot of ground in an honest and reflective way. Your summary is so good its worth repeating:
...we're digging in - levying fees, increasing complexity, and arguing that customers are just going to have to suck it up. After all, where else are they going to go?
It might seem like banker-bashing is the new national, no global, sport, but if you look we are frequently bashing the spongers and thieves in society and want rid. We basically want both to suffer a little like we feel we are suffering - this is like a lower-middle-class revolution.
But banking is so institutionalised - can it ever really change that much? Did Egg really change the underlying process and experience by 'going internet'. Are we all home-trading and moving our investments about? Not really, but a bit. It takes time to turn the oil tanker, and you can only do it bit by bit. Embracing social channels with customers is another bit.
20 Oct 2011 09:16 Read comment
Sorry, I don't get it. What is the use case again? Who runs the service - the MNO or Citi? Just not clear to me at all from this glitzy promo vid.
18 Oct 2011 07:52 Read comment
Karl,
I think Banks are in a stronger position that you might be thinking? Certainly they need to change at a faster pace, and collaborate with the other stakeholders around NFC to make it be adopted faster, but never underestimate their position in controlling the Point of Sale ecosystem and POS terminals themselves. It is the terminals which ultimately enable the NFC channel (whether via card or NFC enabled mobile). So far only innovative Square and maybe PayPal have plans to chip away at that, and I think they will be niche providers for a while yet.
The mobile operators are in a gatekeeper role at the moment, trying to ensure they get some payment for being a NFC surrogate host and trying to identify a stake where they add the best value. Clearly they are experienced in provisioning SIMs, have (collectively at least) a huge consumer/subscriber base to bring to the take and control which devices they adopt on their network. Their billing relationship (pre or post) is an important asset since many consumers would quite like NFC micro-payments to be backed by their phone bill rather than (or in addition to) their bank account. Topping Up digital cash funds in a wallet is akin to PrePay SIM topup - so the various schemes should leverage that too.
Lets hope all parties remember the lessons of SIMPAY when they tried this first time round. They need to stop pulling in different directions and playing brinksmanship games. I assume they are working hard to do just this, although the Citibank seem to think that ISIS is not.
17 Oct 2011 14:42 Read comment
If only you had a penny per view, eh?
11 Oct 2011 23:24 Read comment
Looks great. Took about 30 secs from reaching for the phone, scanning the QR code and downloading/installing the app - brilliant.
Cannot see comments to the Blogs though. Expect some nice enhancements in future versions. Well done
11 Oct 2011 21:09 Read comment
Sounds like you are better placed than I to know, but I have an opinion too and thought I would share the link to the Robin Hood site for others to decide: http://robinhoodtax.org/
I definitely agree that there is "...an obvious need to reassure the taxpayer that banks are playing their part in the economic recovery" since the general opinion seems to be that Banks are still too large to fail and they make hay whichever way the wind blows, with others' money.
Would a RH tax really make those countries adopting it a pariah for banking? I think there are bigger costs that matter.
11 Oct 2011 21:04 Read comment
Cutting electricity is a powerful tactic in surpressing uprisings! But people get generators and make the best of it.
With cable theft on the rise, even in so called first world countries, losing phone and more importantly broadband is almost as debilitating (POS terminals stop, most information is cut off). But at least you'll have electric and smartphones to get that digital news fix.
11 Oct 2011 08:27 Read comment
I think you are right. Even the article doesn't believe the research. Noone will pay £3 to top up a NFC wallet with, say, £15-£20 of funds.
And I do not see why 'most users' will not accept a per transaction fee, although I accept that current practice is for the merchant to shoulder the fees, not the consumer (they just set the price to cover this, so the consumer is still paying really).
Someone has to pay the piper for the TopUp... if its from a bank account, there are charges. If its from a mobile operator billing account, there are costs too. The bank or MNO might be prepared to allow the TopUp operation for free if they know they are getting a small (per txn) payment everytime those funds are spent. This involves the transaction processor calculating and then reporting who gets what and then the owner of the 'wallet' remits the various balances to the parties involved (e.g. to Starbucks, to Barclaycard, to the bank or MNO). Obviously these remittances are aggregated and are not per txn.
08 Oct 2011 22:18 Read comment
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