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Ketharaman Swaminathan

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

Mobile OTP: Cyanide Or Caffeine For Online Payments?

I recently received an SMS from one of my credit card issuing banks - the Indian subsidiary of a British high street bank that has a global presence - informing me about the following change in procedure for using its credit cards online: "With immediate effect, for each online transaction on your BANK1 Credit Card, an OTP (One Time Password) ...

Ketharaman Swaminathan

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

Why Is This Data Breach Different?

What data breach? Are you talking about the one that happened at Heartland in 2009? Or, maybe the Fidelity one from 2011? Again, no? Oh, you're referring to the latest one that led to the arrests in New York of several people who fraudulently withdrew $45M from several ATMs. By now, it should be obvious what's different about the latest breach. If...

/security

Ketharaman Swaminathan

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

Linking Aadhaar Number To Bank Account

Running From Pillar To Post To Link Aadhaar Card To Bank Account On my last few visits to the Internet Banking portal of this bank - a Top 3 private sector bank in India - I'd been seeing the banner shown below - no, bottom of this page - requesting customers to link their Aadhaar Number to their bank account at the earliest. (For the uninitiated,...

/payments

Ketharaman Swaminathan

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

Five Ways to Stimulate Electronic Payments

Five Ways to Stimulate Electronic Payments (Hint: Discouraging Cheques Is Not One Of Them) The number of times the words "should" and "charge" appear in this article titled "RBI WANTS TO DISCOURAGE USE OF CHEQUES" got me wondering if "negative reinforcement" is seen as the only way to wean people away from ...

/payments

Ketharaman Swaminathan

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

Banks Have Nothing To Fear From TELCOs

In my opinion article titled "Impact of Regulation on Financial Services Providers" that was published in the August 2012 issue of The Journal of Internet Banking & Commerce, I'd argued that banks don't have much to fear from the slew of financial products launched by non-banking financial services providers. In response to this pie...

/payments

Ketharaman Swaminathan

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

If This Is Mobile Banking

Many banks tend to view Mobile Banking as a truncated version of Internet Banking and most of them offer mobile banking only to their existing Internet Banking users. This approach completely negates the true potential of mobile - after all, if I check my account balance once a week, make one or two fund transfers per month and don't buy more than...

Ketharaman Swaminathan

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

CTS2010 Compliant Or Not?

Soon after I wrote CTS2010: Cheque Truncation Or Contract Termination System?, a senior banker averred to me in private that India's cheque truncation program had a lot of loose ends. A friend of mine who used to work for a CTS solutions provider pointed out that the program had an ever greater impact on NBFCs than banks (For the uninitiated, a No...

/payments /retail

Ketharaman Swaminathan

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

The Death Of Cash Is At Least 190 Years Away

According to a Barron's article titled The End of Cash?, the use of cash as a percentage of retail spending in the USA declined from 36% in 2002 to 29% in 2012. Extrapolating these figures - by using the same negative CAGR that works out to around 19.5% per decade - we should see the end of cash usage by 2202, that is, 190 years from now. An Excel...

/security /payments

Ketharaman Swaminathan

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

CTS-2010: Cheque Truncation Or Contract Termination System?

There has been a spate of ads and announcements over the last 3-4 weeks by banks in India about the introduction of the new Cheque Truncation System, CTS-2010, from the new year. For the uninitiated, CTS transforms cheque clearing from a paper-intensive to a digital process whereby only images of cheques move between the payer bank, payee bank a...

/payments /retail

Ketharaman Swaminathan

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

The Clear And Present Danger With NFC Payments

Technophobes and security pundits have been warning us for a long time that it’s possible for a passerby with an RFID reader – and malafide intent – to skim debit / credit card details off contactless cards and NFC smartphones even when they’re tucked away inside their owners’ wallets, pockets or hand bags. I’d a first hand exposure of this securi...

/payments

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