Payments and Expanding the Global Economy

The intermediate “flux” period in market creation is painful. There are many entrenched interests that want to keep competition at bay. However we all must agree on basic tenants when operating within existing markets, or we will continue to waste valuable time, capital and people. Investors in emerging markets must find ways to coordinate and discuss conflict more effectively. We must encourage governments to create policies and regulations which enable effective information flow, networks, and markets. As Brazil demonstrates, it’s much better to have a slice of a very big pie.. than control a share of a very small one. Continue reading »

Push Payments

As a bank, would you invest in NFC? A standard owned by the card groups, and telecos and despised by retailers? Of course not.. it does nothing to help banks, merchants or consumers…

I the centerpiece of any retail bank strategy should be to protect the consumer relationship. If you “blew up” payments today and started from scratch, how would you design payments? I agree with Ross Anderson (See KC Fed) Ross Anderson “If you solve the authentication problem.. everything else is just accounting ..” . Why should I pass my authentication to a merchant, processor, acquirer, network, .. all just to give it to my (issuing/originating) bank? What if I could interact with the originating bank directly to instruct them to send the payment? Continue reading »