Ever since I got my iPhone, I’ve been hopelessly devoted to Angry Birds, along with about 75 million other people. 75 million! That’s 75 million playing a game on their smartphone. That’s more than the whole population of Britain all playing Angry Birds. Wow! How did that happen and what’s it got to do with…
It’s the GSMA Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this week. It’s a big deal as the mobile operators and manufacturers announce their major news items for the year, such as Microsoft acquiring Nokia. That’s why Steve Ballmer is down there doing a keynote today along with Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter. There’s Eric Schmidt,…
The Banking Year Ahead. Sounds like some sort of swear word but no, it’s all to do with predictions time. What are the big events of 2011 going to be? Barack Obama begins the campaign trail for election 2012. North Korea ignites a battle with South Korea that sees a distance divide between China and…
So, there are a lot of things we’re juggling around with in the payments arena, from real-time to TARGET2 to SEPA to SWIFT ISO20022 to mobile to contactless to biometrics and more. I guess I can summarise this area best by using the results from this year’s payments survey because the last section of the…
So this week I thought it worth posting a few reflections on 2010, the year that was, and begin with some thoughts on retail banking (tomorrow will be payments and Wednesday, capital markets). Surprisingly, retail banking has not had any really startling changes. Branches are still the focal point, as evidenced by Santander who increased…
You may think this blog title sounds familiar . It should be as it combines two key themes from the 2000s: the Death of Distance and the Digital Divide. One argues that technology has connected us all globally and overcomes distance which changes business models; the other argues that there are those who get digital…
Another great evening at the FSClub last week with the Samee and Dave show. OK, it’s not a double-act although I’m trying hard to make them into one, with Samee the straight guy and Dave the fungi obviously. Samee Zafar and David Birch are both great speakers about payments and, in particular, mobile payments. As…
We had a really interesting free-ranging conversation about remittances and new services for remittances yesterday. Oh yes, I should say that I’m at a remittances conference so that’s the reason why. The discussion was about the NEXT BIG THING in money transfer … or rather whether and if there is a NEXT BIG THING in…
Spent a lot of time yesterday talking with folks about the future of money, payments and banking. The conversation got interesting in two particular areas: branches and mobile services. This is because I realised some things. Take branches. There appears to be an evolution of branch usage from underbanked economies through emerging economies to developed…
As usual, some good stuff in Wired Magazine this month. One article stood out for me in particular, which is about the rivalry between Foursquare and Gowalla. I’d heard of Foursquare but not much about Gowallla, and now see the next rise of web usage in more clarity. Both sites are about checking in with…
