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How do you behave when no-one is watching?

During my trip around the Middle East, I met a lot of banks looking at a lot of new ventures with lots of dialogue about new business models, new products and services, new organisational structures and new ways to communicate with staff, customers and stakeholders. One of the key questions was how to maximise human…

Cyberwars: a far bigger threat than hacktivists

Whilst consumers are electing the next major political leader via crowdsourced populism, governments and companies begin developing cyberarms. This cyberwarfare is already rife, with a host of malware targeting middle eastern nations (see end of blog entry). What is obvious from these developments is that cyberattacks are the new form of warfare that evades direct…

We are Legion: the History of Hacktivism

I went to see a screening of a new film about Anonymous last night called We Are Legion: the Story of the Hacktivists. The film tells the story about the rise of Anonymous and the hacktivism movement, portrayed through interviews with many of the key players. The film includes some of my favourite discussion areas,…

Hactivism

Do you believe in NFC?

I ‘ve been talking about contactless for years now  - I remember talking about the Octopus card system about ten years ago after it launched in Hong Kong in 1997 – and still find it surprising how invisible it is. Sure it got some coverage at the Olympics but some, like Forrester, reckon that NFC mobile payments…

Contactless

Who are you f-ing Americans?

Standard Chartered paid off the new Sheriff of New York City, Benjamin Lawsky, to the tune of $340 million to get rid of the pest.  As Investec's commentator Ian Gordon said yesterday, they “acted with pragmatism and integrity in the face of extreme provocation”. What really gets me here is the whole USA versus the rest…

Screen Shot 2012-08-15 at 12.05.54

Square shakes up the mobile payments world more than most

More conversations about mobile payments with a wave of news this week: Google, Carriers, Credit Cards Unite on Mobile Payments Committee How Cheap NFC Changes the Mobile Payment Race What Square’s Starbucks Deal Means For Mobile Payments And An Apple iWallet My Mobile Payments floats operations in Britain Deutsche Telekom AG : Next step in…

Five Good Things Banks Are Doing

Someone made the comment that I would not receive any business from the five banks named yesterday with the biggest mistakes, so I thought I would rectify that by picking on five good things that banks are doing. It’s harder to find, because it is less reported, but there are a number of banks that…

Liverpool-seeing-is-believing-

The Top Five Most Embarrassing Mistakes By Banks

I kinda thought that some of the things that have happened in banking in the past – like the collapse of Lehmans and Barings Bank; Jerome Kerviel, Henry Blodgett and Frank Quattrone;  insider trading and Ponzi schemes; and more – were pretty bad, but someone asked me to make a list of the top five…

UBS1

Lloyds’ Olympian Challenge

It’s Friday, it’s summertime and it’s the day the London 2012 Olympics begin. Fantastic. Tonight’s opening ceremony should be amazing and so, rather than talking about banking today, I thought I would talk about banking Olympians. Lloyds Bank were one of the first to sponsor the London Olympics. They have an official bank sponsor website…

Lloyds

Get ready for Facebook banking

There’s a buzz that’s started about Facebook banking asCommonwealth Bank of Australia and ICICI Bank get into Facebook banking apps, with Citibank fast to follow. What’s going on? Originally, we all though Facebook would take over bank functions through stealth creep via Facebook credits. Facebook credits are in fact worth around $1.5 billon a year…

Citi tweet

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