Payments

The banking industry continually seeks to find cost-effective methods to minimise fraud, although often in a way that creates issues or insecurities with the customer.  A great example is the UK’s implementation of Chip&PIN, with Canada, France and other countries implementing similar programs. From a personal perspective, the one thing I have noticed is that…

Is it just me, but the news today that eBay are trying to force all Australian users of its website to use PayPal seems to be a bit of a strange strategy.  Don’t they remember that PayPal succeeded because it was available across all sites and did not have the same restrictive practices or usage…

Is it just me, but the news today that eBay are trying to force all Australian users of its website to use PayPal seems to be a bit of a strange strategy.  Don’t they remember that PayPal succeeded because it was available across all sites and did not have the same restrictive practices or usage…

Is it just me, but the news today that eBay are trying to force all Australian users of its website to use PayPal seems to be a bit of a strange strategy.  Don’t they remember that PayPal succeeded because it was available across all sites and did not have the same restrictive practices or usage…

In times of crisis, there is danger and opportunity, and this is no truer than when there is a recession, stagflation or war. In the 1920’s for example, during the runaway hyperinflationary times of the Weimar Republic, Germans started to create alternative economies using local currencies. This is because the national currency was effectively worthless…

Social networks have created new forms of money already and, as I spend more time playing with these virtual currencies, I can see how they may become the future of money, from a retail and consumer viewpoint anyway. For example, last November, I wrote about the threats of money laundering in virtual worlds. At the…

Social networks have created new forms of money already and, as I spend more time playing with these virtual currencies, I can see how they may become the future of money, from a retail and consumer viewpoint anyway. For example, last November, I wrote about the threats of money laundering in virtual worlds. At the…

Social networks have created new forms of money already and, as I spend more time playing with these virtual currencies, I can see how they may become the future of money, from a retail and consumer viewpoint anyway. For example, last November, I wrote about the threats of money laundering in virtual worlds. At the…

There was a nice little press release from research firm IMS this week headlined, “Smart Card Global Domination Nearing Completion”. The report is all about the fact that there will be over seven billion smart cards issued in 2009. The human race won’t reach seven billion people until 2011, so there will be more smart…

I received an email last week that totally blindsided me. It read: “Thank you for your reservation with SouthWest Airlines. Below are details of your flights: Wednesday, August 27th 2008Nonstop, BUF-MDW 398 Depart Buffalo (BUF) at 10:25 AMArrive in Chicago (MDW) at 11:05 AM Monday, September 8th 2008Nonstop, MDW-BUF 1753Depart Chicago (MDW) at 4:30 PMArrive…