150 Results
Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions
Financial inclusion, banking the unbanked - call it what you will but, in a nutshell, the gist of these initiatives can be expressed as follows: People wish to borrow money only from banks; people wish to deposit their savings only in banks. But, since they can't access a bank, they're forced to dealing with loan sharks and blade companies. To prot...
08 August 2014 /payments /retail
There’s no shortage of studies about the hidden costs of cash. Take this recent HBR report for example. On the face of it, they all make a solid case for society to turn cashless from tomorrow. However, upon scratching the surface, I’ve never found a single one of these articles penned by merchants who are the biggest victim of these purported hid...
21 July 2014 /payments
I must be an "early adopter" in Running From Pillar To Post To Link Aadhaar Card To Bank Account: A year later, the early and late majority of LPG subsidy beneficiaries have still not managed to link their Aadhaar Cards to their bank accounts. But it doesn't matter any more. Politicians sensed that it was a dumb idea to tell people to pa...
11 July 2014 /regulation /retail
Security increases friction. That's not news. I've written a few blog posts - click here, and here - on this perennial tradeoff in payments. However, I recently realized that security measures can actually cause new sources of vulnerability. Ironic but true. Since December 2013, India's central bank RBI has made it mandatory for all debit and cred...
03 June 2014 /security
Advances in Big Data, Internet of Things and other technologies are contributing to an ever-increasing quantum of information in today's digital world. Not surprisingly, analytics has become a hot topic once again. But I sometimes wonder if there's such a thing as "too much analytics". I'm not thinking of "analysis paralysis" wh...
19 May 2014 /retail
In Mobile Wallets Should Fix What’s Broken – And It Ain’t Payments, I'd highlighted why paying by plastic card is natural and how mobile wallets are really not offering any compelling reason for people to use them for making payments. Furtheremore, I'd pointed out in Doubling Mobile Wallet Adoption By Halving Its Scope that merchants really don't...
27 April 2014
In Omnichannel Fiasco #1: Standard Chartered Credit Card, I'd described a recent omnichannel experience that started well but went downhill soon thereafter. In this post, let me describe another encounter with omnichannel that was a fiasco from the word go. This was with Vodafone M-PESA mobile wallet. My early involvement in its development couple...
14 April 2014
In over two decades of using credit cards, I missed a payment for the first time a couple of months ago. This happened on my HSBC credit card, which I've been holding for nearly 10 years. I'm blaming eStatements for my slip up. I typically receive the printed statement for this credit card around the first week of a month for the payment that's due...
31 March 2014 /security
I recently went through two omnichannel experiences, one that started well but went downhill soon thereafter and another that was a disaster from the beginning. Before I deep dive into my experiences, omnichannel is where a single business process is deliberately split across multiple channels so that each channel does what it's really good at and...
18 March 2014 /retail
In Will The Sad State Of Logistics Hurt eCommerce? (hyperlink removed but this post will come up on top of the Google SERP), I’d alluded to how DHL, FedEx and other multinational courier companies are 8-10X costlier than the local ones in India, and are, therefore, used only for high-value consignments. I recently went through an experience which ...
07 February 2014 /regulation
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