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Ketharaman Swaminathan

Founder and CEO
GTM360 Marketing Solutions
Member since
17 Apr 2009
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Pune
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Followed by John Sims, Martha Boyle and 5 others you follow
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Ketharaman's comments

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The rise of Scan and Go technology and how it works

Well, if you put an RFID label on each item, you don't need Scan & Go. Actually, Metro Germany and a couple of other big box retailers conducted pilots using RFID labels in circa 2002, which was well before smartphones came into existence. The shopping cart had an RFID scanner. As items embedded with RFID labels were dropped into the cart, they were automatically scanned and the bill was printed out at the end. (Alternatively, there were a few central RFID scanner gantries at checkout, you could simply wheel out your cart through them, all items would be (theoretically) scanned at one shot, so there was no queue). This solution was also pilfer-proof. However, it failed to gain traction because of the high cost of the labeling solution in terms of material cost of the RFID tag and labor cost of affixing them on each and every item in the store. Memory serves, Scan & Go type of solutions were developed as a more cost-effective alternative for RFID based solutions. AFAIK, the RFID solution is still too costly for mainstream adoption even today. So RFID add-on to Scan & Go is a non-starter.

10 Oct 2017 15:53 Read comment

The rise of Scan and Go technology and how it works

'Scan & Go' has been around for years. It failed to set retail on fire because it let shoppers easily carry out pilferage by simply not scanning an item before dropping it into their shopping cart. To solve that problem, a store anyway had to have its security guard physically verify that all items in the basket were scanned and paid for. Keen on knowing if Scan & Go has solved that problem. In any case, doesn't Scan & Go sound a little dated in the age of Amazon Go? 

09 Oct 2017 19:25 Read comment

You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, so goes the saying

In my post Banks Will Know Chipotle Is Going Bankrupt Before Chipotle, I’ve quoted several examples of banks making excellent use of data gathered not only from the earth but also from the sky to make a quick buck. That said, banks may need to be more cautious than other industries in how far they go with data (probably because they handle money, which is different from goods and services). Like in the example quoted in my post, while customers say they want personalized offers and do like the ones they get from Uber et al, they tend to find the ones they get from banks quite creepy.

09 Oct 2017 15:32 Read comment

Faster Payments invites bids for infrastructure overhaul

@AndrewStrong: I'm not debating the process. I'm only wondering why it can't be expedited. After it's not called Slower Payments:) And, if memory serves, vendor selection took about a year the first time around 10-12 years ago, shouldn't it happen lot faster than that, considering that "agile" has gone mainstream in SDLC now?:)

@JohnQuamina: Please correct me if I'm wrong but functional and technical requirements are written after the vendor is selected. Ergo, their completion shouldn't be a prerequisite for selecting the vendor.

@AnonFinextraMember: I vaguely remember a similar question coming up in the context of MasterCard's acquisiton of VocaLink. Extrapolating from my fading and limited understanding of the answer provided by someone at the time, NPSO is probably not the owner of FPS and will operate whatever FPS infrastructure is given to it by whoever the owner of FPS is.

09 Oct 2017 12:17 Read comment

Faster Payments invites bids for infrastructure overhaul

One year to select a supplier?

Faster Payments happened in 2008 but Faster Supplier selection hasn't yet started:)

06 Oct 2017 19:27 Read comment

Canadian lenders issue open banking warning

Oh c'mon @BrianCostello, you want banks to add more friction to Internet Banking just so that fintechs can get read-only access? This "open banking" thing is sounding even more delusional than I thought.

I also love the way the number of customers who have benefited from PFM / MoMMA has suddenly jumped from "thousands" to "millions". But let me play along for the moment: In the IT industry, of which fintech is a part, it's a standard practice to provide testimonials from customers. Where are these testimonials in the case of PFM/ MoMMA? I had a quick glance at the CFDRG and DNATA websites you linked to and couldn't find any testimonial. They say they want to help customers but don't provide any evidence of already having done so.

06 Oct 2017 17:27 Read comment

Ten Years of iPhone Success: What Could Banks Learn From Nokia’s Fall?

To answer the question that forms the title of your post: Nothing. For more than one reason:

  1. Banking is an industry. Nokia is one single company.
  2. Apple does not run on Nokia's rails. Almost all of fintech runs on banking rails. 
  3. Nokia was disrupted by Apple, which is another company in the same industry. 
  4. There's no equivalent of Apple in the banking industry. Even if one were to emerge from some other industry, such a company can offer a full suite of banking products to compete with banks only by getting a banking license - i.e. by becoming another bank. If and when that happens, one company in the banking industry would have killed all other companies in the same industry. That's good old competition at play and has been happening since the dawn of business.
  5. For all the threats to the banking industry from fintechs for the last 5-7 years, finserv continues to be the most profitable sector in the world. 

I'm surprised to be reading a time-warped post like this, a year or two after many fintechs themselves called off their former disruption mantra and publicly accepted that their survival depends on working with banks. 

06 Oct 2017 16:48 Read comment

Bloomberg unbundles chat to take on Symphony

LOL the mother of all fintechs is feeling threatened by banks now!

06 Oct 2017 16:16 Read comment

PSD2: Brits don't trust retailers and social media platforms with bank details

"Customers want to leave their wallet at home".

"Customers need help with their finances".

"Customers must be permitted to switch banks".

Given the tepid response to mobile wallet, PFM / MoMMA and Account Switching technologies, these assumptions are more imagination.

Hope the assumption that customers want to cross the digital road and need help doing so is grounded on reality.

Suppliers are the ones who will benefit from adoption of their products / services. So why should public money be used for this program? Especially when vendor consortia like CFDRG and FDATA already seem to be doing some work in this space (Source). 

06 Oct 2017 15:55 Read comment

Canadian lenders issue open banking warning

Let's examine this statement carefully: "financial wellness for thousands of consumers have been improved by consumer-permissioned data driven solutions."

Given that MINT et al boast of millions, if not tens of millions, of users, "thousands of consumers" is 0.1% of the user base. IMO, any technology that delivers its promised benefits to only 0.1% of its user base is closer to snake-oil than innovation. Taking financial decisions by using the toss of a coin would've benefited a far higher percentage of the user base.

It's simply not worth handing over the keys to the kingdom - aka Online Banking  credentials - to something that delivers benefits to such a tiny fraction of its user base.

06 Oct 2017 10:09 Read comment

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Ketharaman writes about

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