Payments

Aneace Haddad has asked me to explain more about my idea of a Long Tail in Banking.   The Long Tail in banking would be a mass market of niche microgroups that incur no cost overheads to manage but, for each transaction, creates a small profit. As the mass of niche transactions build, the small…

Aneace Haddad has asked me to explain more about my idea of a Long Tail in Banking.   The Long Tail in banking would be a mass market of niche microgroups that incur no cost overheads to manage but, for each transaction, creates a small profit. As the mass of niche transactions build, the small…

I wrote an indepth analysis eighteen months ago about PayPal’s 100 months birthday and now they’re celebrating their official tenth anniversary, so I thought I would add a small addendum. Although I say it’s a small addendum, it’s quite an interesting one. Basically, I was updating some old slides about PayPal and thought that I…

I attended a long discussion yesterday about High Value Payments (HVP). I wondered why we even bothered to discuss and delineate between Low Value Payments (LVP) and HVP these days. Surely, we should just talk about Real-Time Payments (RTP), near RTP (sub two hours) and D+n. Alternatively, urgent versus non-urgent with T+n, dependent upon your…

A question came up in today’s EBA sessions for Joe Pawelczyk, Vice President for International Relations at CHIPS, the American Clearing House for over $2 trillion of wire payments each day. The question seemed quite simple: “Why doesn’t America use IBANs for their bank account numbers, as all of Europe has now standardised on this?”…

A question came up in today’s EBA sessions for Joe Pawelczyk, Vice President for International Relations at CHIPS, the American Clearing House for over $2 trillion of wire payments each day. The question seemed quite simple: “Why doesn’t America use IBANs for their bank account numbers, as all of Europe has now standardised on this?”…

I have been attending a conference on Prepaid this week, one of the largest of its kind with over 300 delegates all focused upon this burgeoning market. The fact so many are attending says something, and most of these attendees appear to be from organisations other than banks. Transit authorities, mobile telephones operators, governments, utilities,…

I don’t write about politics, because I am not a political creature. However, I felt compelled to write about this subject after Europe’s soul-searching over its identity since the Irish threw out the EU Treaty. The fact that the Constitution and the Treaty are unwanted does not de-stabilise our banking efforts under the Payment Services…

Intriguing discussions today about the Oyster Card in London. This is the contactless card operated by Transport for London (TfL) to allow everyone to travel across the London public transport system without using cash. It’s basically a prepaid contactless card, like the Octopus Card in Hong Kong or the New York Subway Card. Oyster was…

EBAday, or is that days as it is now 2 days, is upon us next week. This is the annual jamboree for the Euro Bankers Association to celebrate the arrival of SEPA, after much anticipation since EBA days started three years ago. This year it is in Helsinki on Wednesday and Thursday of next week,…