Future

I’m speaking at a conference on the future of payments today for one of the world’s largest suppliers of payments terminals. They asked me my views on the future of the point-of-sale, and I said that it would disappear. Not a good position to take when you’re the keynote speaker at a conference for a…

I spent a day strategising with one of the Middle Eastern banks about the launch of a direct bank service.  One of the key questions they asked me is: do we organise the back office in the same way as our contact centre and internet bank service? The easy answer would be yes, but that…

Whilst consumers are electing the next major political leader via crowdsourced populism, governments and companies begin developing cyberarms. This cyberwarfare is already rife, with a host of malware targeting middle eastern nations (see end of blog entry). What is obvious from these developments is that cyberattacks are the new form of warfare that evades direct…

During the week, I’ve been discussing various aspects of risk and riot in the system, from the potential for an uprising to how anonymous works. One of the key areas to consider is also where all this goes in the future. That’s what I thought would be good to talk about today. I should be…

I spent some time contemplating history last week, and realised just how many times we have been through moments like this. The Civil War in Britain; the storming of the Bastille in France; the Russian Revolution; the themes of many German philosophers during the 1800s, such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche; and more. Throughout…

After the LIBOR debacle and the money laundering affairs of Standard Chartered and HSBC, the UK’s banks reputation are in the toilet. Now we have to rebuild, and this is where it gets interesting and challenging. After claiming that the Americans were holding our banks to ransom last week, we now see the potentially true…