I was involved in a tweminar yesterday organised by Karen Hsu of Informatica, and in conversation with Nancy Atkinson of Aite Group. This conversation was all about payments and specifically SEPA, ISO20022, interoperability and more. It is also the second tweminar I've participated in – the first was with First Direct's CEO - and they are incredibly difficult…
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…
Peter Ayliffe, President and Chief Executive of Visa Europe, presented to the Financial Services Club this week his vision of next generation payments, and how far we could become cashless. The war on cash is the drumbeat of all card firms, and it was notable that Peter made it clear that he did not…
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…
I was at a fascinating meeting yesterday looking at developments in credit, debit and prepaid cards. There was a standout moment when we had a discussion about China Unionpay (CUP), China’s card processing operator. First a bit of background. CUP was set up under the auspices of China’s central bank in March 2002, and is the…
