Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

Payments

Apple, Google and Samsung wallets: who’s winning the marketing wars?

Last month, I posted an update on the comparisons between Apple, Google and Samsung’s mobile wallets, so this month I thought it worth comparing their adverts. Let’s start with Apple Pay.  The tagline is: If it’s not an iPhone, it’s not an iPhone.  I guess the marketing guys spent an age coming up with that…

The implications of PSD2 and third party access to accounts (research)

I just found some interesting research about how banks in Europe are reacting to the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2), and what other banks worldwide think about it. PSD2 is a work-in-progress European regulation that will impact financial institutions already operating within the scope of the first Payment Services Directive of 2009.  PSD2 extends the…

HSBC-BACS outage, as UK announces a world class payments system

Which do you want first, the good news or the bad news?  OK, I’m gonna give you the bad news first.  HSBC is down.  According to the Daily Telegraph: HSBC hit by payments crash on payday The giant bank says it is having problems with the BACS payments system, as customers wait for their pay…

Have banks made a fatal mistake with Apple Pay?

I was sitting the other day thinking about the good old days. In the good old days, if something was big and challenging, banks would get together and create a co-operative to solve the problem. SWIFT, Visa and MasterCard were all bank created co-operatives.  Admittedly, times have changed and now Visa and MasterCard are private…

PayPal

When paying is free, what then?

What happens when the cost of payments reaches zero, the speed of payments is instant, and everyone globally can make and take a payment, what happens then? I just had an interesting chat with someone and realised two things: one is that we’re talking about moving away from batch to real-time, and that’s where the…

Stats

The Changing Face of Payments – Free Research Report

In the spring of 2015, the Financial Services Club ran an online survey, in collaboration with Cognizant and VocaLink, about the nature and state of the world’s largest payment processing infrastructures and whether they are fit for purpose. The survey reviewed the areas influencing payments; the technologies that have the most impact; the ability of…

FIDO needs more vision for digital identities

The real way to crack the onboarding and criminal activity is to create strong and secure digital identities.  We are moving in that direction, but it’s a long slow process.  For ages now, I’ve written about getting rid of passwords and improving authentication using mobile technologies: Why is KYC so difficult? AML prevention lies in…

FIDO

You must pay in cash

When you talk non-stop about digital, it sometimes gives you a reality check when you actually live life in a physical world.  The frustrations of crashed systems, products that don’t work, call centre operators who aren’t co-operative and check-in staff who can’t check-in.  Equally, there are the moments of pure bliss such as the smell…

The jury’s still out on Apple Pay…

This is a blog from the Hotwire PR website, written by Camilla Ives.  It summarises my good friend John Chaplin's Payments Innovation Jury Report report well.  The report has been produced annually for the past four years and John will be presenting this in person to the Financial Services Club in England (June) and Poland…