Elton Cane Digital product delivery at News Corp Australia
An Aussie start-up with a new take on online mortgage brokerage is betting a good number of people will. Flongle encourages consumers to carefully map out their ideal mortgage for a new property or refinancing, and then for a fee anonymously put it out to Flongle's network of lenders and brokers to bid on in a "mortgage contest". In a way...
18 September 2014 /retail Future Finance
If you want a new debit or credit card in Australia, you're getting PayWave or PayPass - there's no choice. And Australian police forces, and at least some consumers, don't like it. Police are bemoaning an increase in contactless credit and debit card fraud arising from stolen tap and go cards, and point to increases in handbag thefts, car break-i...
29 August 2014 /security Future Finance
There's been a lot of hype and controversy about Bitcoin. Exchanges have bloomed, been taken down, been hacked and evolved. Regulators are running this way and that. The tech and mainstream media has jumped on board, variously predicting crash and burn or a transformed digital currency future. And there have been a bunch of followers, tweaking the...
07 August 2014 Future Finance
The answer seems to depend on where in the world you are, and who's backing these new entrants. News today out of Australia and China highlights two possible approaches. In Australia, one of the promises brought into government by the conservatives who took power last year was a "root and branch" inquiry into the state of the country's fi...
26 March 2014 /regulation Future Finance
I came across an interesting blog post recently about how the untrained human brain is disadvantaged when it comes to recognising or thinking about big numbers. These limitations, and reliance on gut feel and framing analysis via proportionality not only play into the hands of car dealers looking to upsize customers to the next model up with ext...
03 March 2014 /regulation /retail Future Finance
With PayPal and others pushing the "it's time for wearable payments line", more handset payment developments and Visa and MasterCard trumpeting the increasing penetration of their respective contactless payment schemes for low-value purchases at retail points of sale, I decided to spend some time looking at two things: - the actual curr...
26 February 2014 /payments Future Finance
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) estimates that microfinance has reached some 130 million people worldwide in the last 15 years. This is impressive growth, certainly, and has no doubt contributed to the improvement of indivudal and community economic circumstances in the many areas where microfinance providers operate effectively. And ...
03 February 2014 /retail Future Finance
I can't say I was too surprised to see that Swedbank has scrapped its QR-code payment initiative. While the scanning of a QR-code could feasibly be used to trigger any function or transaction that can be executed on a mobile device, when it comes to payments it fails to match up to the many more convenient options that are available to consumers a...
23 January 2014 /payments Future Finance
Well, it looks like I'll finally have to remember the PIN on my infrequently used credit card. Visa and Mastercard have got their way after lobbying regulators so come August 1, POS terminals will only accept a PIN for authorisation on credit cards issued in Australia. Considering chip cards have been ubiquitous for some time, and 55% of POS credi...
23 January 2014 /security /payments Future Finance
Referencing the move by Barclays in the UK to introduce mobile cheque imaging in response to the reversal of banking industry plans to kill off cheques by 2018, APCA CEO Chris Hamilton recently said that type of technology could be seen in Australia in the next few years. But any vendors involved in implementing Check21 in the US last decade and...
10 January 2014 /payments /retail Future Finance
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