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LOL not in my wildest dreams did I imagine that "instant credit" would be for cab fare. Just my limitation, I guess.

I installed ICICI Store ("displays all mobile apps of ICICI Group in a single window" according to its Google Play Store description) ~3 years ago and deleted it ~2 years ago. Wonder what's new now?

Yaay, as I'd predicted last year at https://www.finextra.com/blogs/fullblog.aspx?blogid=12420, Brexit hasn't hurt UK Fintech one bit.

UK Fintech is faring even better than I'd predicted. 

https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/31496/fintech-leads-the-way-as-investment-in-uk-tech-firms-doubles-in-2017

"...London's fintech sector remains a hotbed of investment activity, capturing the lion's share of a £2.99 billion venture capital splurge on UK tech firms."

"...VC investment into the UK’s tech sector reaching an all-time high in 2017 at almost double the £1.63 billion invested in 2016." 

"Brexit may be a dark cloud on horizon, but UK firms attracted almost four times more funding in 2017 than Germany (£694m) and more than France, Ireland and Sweden combined."

@JamesPiggot:

TY for your kind words. Yes, I did promise to explain why I think AXA Fizzy is on Blockchain in a follow-on post. But, a week after I made that promise, I'm still not able to find any compelling reasons for Blockchain and am literally losing sleep over the follow-on post:(. Statements like "...the Ethereum Blockchain is public, any crypto developer can therefore check the validity of the information we store there." on the FAQ page of AXA Fizzy's website are not making my job any easier. 

"If they had to pay out for every late arrival then they have to charge more for our journeys, hence they have our best interests at heart!": ROTFL:)

There's a slight difference though: In the case of AXA Fizzy - and a couple of other Blockchain-based flight delay insurance companies - you need to pay money to buy the insurance policy, only then you'll get the compensation automatically (in your credit card account). I think the premium will help our "wonderful institutions" to keep their best interests at heart, too! That's why I predicted that "AXA Fizzy ... could potentially create a manifold increase in the size of the market for travel insurance products."

@CharmaineOak:

TY for your kind words.

That line is stated from insurance buyer's p.o.v. A genuine buyer would be quite offended if the insurer thinks their claim is fraudulent. A fraudulent buyer would be very offended:)

While I'll be covering the insurance carrier's p.o.v in the next installment, a few quick observations: (1) Tech is quite widely used in credit card fraud detection and prevention (2) I know at least two providers of tech for insurance fraud detection (3) In both cases, human intervention is used alongside tech (4) In case of this specific insurance product, the claim event is flight delay, which is in the public domain and outside the scope of defrauding by insurance buyer. 

Where do you see scope for fraud by buyer?

@RamdasNarayanan: TY for your kind words. Hope this articles sparks off some potential use cases of Blockchain in your domain of mortgage!

You mean there aren't already a "few killer and heavily promoted ‘apps’ ... that will excite consumers and show them the potential benefits of the platform/ecosystem..."? Then what exactly is going to happen on 13 January?

A year ago, I'd felt that, compared to the valuation given to PayTM by Ant Financial, the MoneyGram deal is a steal. Looks like the US regulator also thinks it's a "steal", just of another type!

@JamesPiggot: Good point. By "up to date", are you saying that your individual finserv websites ask you to change your password every N days or so? (In India, by RBI mandate, N = 90 days). If so, I see the same friction hitting all the PSD2-triggered PFMs as well. Going by my experience with using aggregator platforms like HootSuite, I can bet that these PFMs will also use the same creds as your online banking creds even if it's only to access APIs. Another set of creds for API access is too much friction and will be a non-starter.