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3844 Results from /retail

Stanley Epstein

Stanley Epstein Associate at Citadel Advantage Group

Shame on you!

There has been news in recent weeks in the press that the banks continue to wield undue influence, aimed at protecting their powers. This time the news comes from Kenya and it's all about M-PESA. For the uninitiated M-PESA is a micro-payments and banking system based on the mobile phone. The service is aimed at mobile users who do not have a bank...

/payments /retail

Stanley Epstein

Stanley Epstein Associate at Citadel Advantage Group

In my next life I want to be a bank!

Today I went to my bank to draw MY money from MY account. Even doing this without the assistance of a surly bank teller costs me money in transaction fees. I do the work, on the bank's equipment on my own account and I have to pay for the privilege. Anyhow even after having accepted this type of abuse over many years and grown used to it, I was in...

/retail

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Tackling The Wrong End Of the Problem

I noticed an article in the Press today suggesting that the authorities were now considering creating a ‘bad bank’ (we already have more than one, but I know what they mean), into which could be placed up to £260 billion in toxic debts from the banks. The expectation is that this would free the banks to lend more by replacing those debts with cas...

/regulation /retail Transaction Banking

Yuvaraj Anandan

Yuvaraj Anandan Program Management at Private Bank

Low inflation vs. No inflation vs. Deflation

With Inflation in India rapidly going down(now at 6-7% from 14% 6months back) and potentially heading into deflation. what & why that would be any good for indian economy in long-run? I think, answer would be very subjective based on who you ask and for India's scenario it would very difference due to high % of unorganized workforces/SMEs. Inf...

/retail Financial Supply Chain

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Options for Banks - A winner all round

I can see the benefit of enabling customers to retrieve and spend all of their money, especially for those customers that really depend on their last £10, including thse not so well off, children and students (obviously). However, this does strike me as a potentially cynical move on behalf of the ATM provider. If there is a £2 charge to collect you...

/retail

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Savers RIP...

...almost. So the authorities have shaved another 0.5% off rates to 'help the economy'. It certainly doesn't help savers (who are the only people with money to spend) and it must be of limited help to borrowers too (and in any case, I'd be putting any spare cash this did generate either on one side to meet rising repayments later, or reducing my...

/retail Transaction Banking

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

What's your Twitter password?

Quality PR from Sophos. I couldn't put it better myself: IT security and control firm Sophos is calling on Twitter to enforce the use of strong passwords by its members following the recent publication of details on how a hacker managed to gain access to Twitter's internal systems earlier this week. According to reports, the teenage hacker, who u...

/security /retail Finance 2.0

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Dirty money and the flu pandemic

It's the flu season again, so time to dust off some research first published back in May last year in which researchers discovered that the human flu virus can survive on banknotes for up to 17 days. Discussing the results ahead of publication, Yves Thomas, head of the National Influenza Research Centre at Geneva University Hospital, told Reuters...

/retail /wholesale

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Contactless Without A Choice...?

Interesting development by Barclays in adding contactless technology to all their debit cards. I wonder whether they are planning to offer people the option to opt out of the card type, i.e. have a debit card without the contactless capability...? I think that's the choice I would like to make at this point until I understood how safe it was on th...

/retail Transaction Banking

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Interest Tax Proposals Expose Financial Naivety

The economic situation we are in has amply demonstrated how Labour doesn't understand finance well enough to be left in charge of the economy. The worrying thing for me is that the Conservatives are showing a similar lack of basic understanding. What chance do we have of getting out of this mess if both parties cannot understand finance at a bas...

/retail Transaction Banking

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