Technology

Jan 29, 2010

Technoverload

Warning: this is a rage against the machine So the iPad comes out. Guess what? Just as I bought an iPod, the iPod Touch came out. Now, just as I buy the iPod Touch, the iPad comes out. It’s annoying 'cos I want one, but I just bought one. The wrong one. The old one….

Jan 22, 2010

Why would a bank change their core system?

I was asked a question about why a bank would change their core system the other day. There are lots of reasons why a bank would change their core system. Here’s my top five: Legacy constraints: this is the most obvious one, but it does not create a reason for changing a core system in…

Jan 20, 2010

Twitter’s Jack Dorsey reinvents US card payments

Everyone's getting real excited about Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, and his new payments application for the iPhone called Square. If you haven't seen it, here it is: In a lengthy interview with Pymnts.com, Dorsey says: "We can provide a lot of things that I think have been missing in payments – specifically like…

Jan 19, 2010

How far can investment firms innovate?

I’m continually impressed and amazed by the speed of change in the technology of the investment markets. For example, last year was all talk about low latency and lit versus dark pools. This year, it’s all about private cloud-based services based upon colocation and proximity services. Next year, it will be all about real-time liquidity…

Jan 12, 2010

Over half of UK’s internet users bank online

As if to support my contention that a NEW bank should focus upon offering the world's best remote channel banking, the Payments Council released the following press release today: "It is just 12 years since internet banking began, but its popularity has grown so much that, in the first half of 2009, 22 million adults…

Jan 11, 2010

This year’s big thing: Augmented Reality

I’ve been noticing more and more apps for providing information about our environment. Known as augmented reality – rather than artificial reality where you go into a completely fictitious world – the use of such services is increasing rapidly. A good example is the SkyMap app on the Google Android mobile: Simply holding up your mobile to the night…

Jan 8, 2010

Remittances and the need for financial inclusion

I chaired a dinner last night on remittances and it was pretty interesting. The term ‘remittances’ is generally used to refer to foreign workers sending money home and represents major GDP for many countries. For example, Tonga’s remittances represent 40% of the country’s GDP, Samoa’s is 25%, Jamaica’s is over 20% and the Philippines 10%….

Jan 6, 2010

Who am I?

I’m sitting in the house. It’s snowing. Look. This is big news. We don't get snow in Britain anymore. Global warming saw to that. So when it's snowing, it's major news headlines. Non-stop BBC reports saying: "it's snowing". And so it's snowing, and Britain has stopped. Literally. Everything has closed down. We couldn't even get…

Jan 5, 2010

M-PESA reaches 8 million people and $3.37bn

Just checked out Safaricom's results presentation for the first half-year 2009-2010, and found some interesting slides on M-PESA: Fascinating results … especially as Safaricom were not the instigators of M-PESA. At the start, they could not commit to a risky project of this nature with resources and so Vodafone brought in a…

Jan 5, 2010

2010: what’s in store for the technology of banking?

After various predictions yesterday, including the return of Glass-Steagall and a Chinese bank buying an American or European one, today it’s the turn of technology. There are lots of questions about technology, such as: Will Google make us stupid? Will we live in the cloud or the desktop? Will social relations get better? Will the…