Mad men

[Dave Birch] My prediction for 2013? We’ll be in New York a lot more! Consult Hyperion have been Mad Men for a couple of months and CHYP USA Inc. is open for business. We’re at 535 Madison Avenue, New York, NY and our new joint Managing Directors there, Lanny Byers and Howard Hall will be happy to hear from you.

Lanny and Howard bring more than half a century of expertise in digital money and digital identity between them and we’re delighted that they agreed to come on board.

• Lanny Byers brings over 20 years of experience in the electronic payments industry in card program management and consulting. Having held SVP and GM positions within Card Groups at Bank of America and Western Union, he has since gained 11 years’ consulting experience, first at MasterCard and more recently with his own independent consultancy delivering payment and loyalty solutions.
• Howard Hall, a veteran of the start-up and early stage technology arena, has extensive background in electronic security and identity having built and sold several companies including Vericept to Trustwave and most recently Riverglass to ASG Software.

As many of you probably know, Consult Hyperion has had customers in the USA for many, many years and these have included industry leaders in the retail electronic transaction space such the major payment schemes, innovators in the mobile payment space and key players in transit ticketing. But we’ve decided to take the extra step of creating a US presence and bring on board as US team at this time because we think there are a great many organisations in the US who will want to take advantage of our wholly independent (we are not tied to any suppliers, nor do we develop our own products) help to design, develop and deploy transactional solutions.

So why now? There are three main reasons for making the decision to create a US subsidiary now:

1. The US liability shift and EMV migration. We know how to help organisations go from stripes to chips without wasting money. In particular we already have experience as independent consultants to US banks migrating from stripe to chip in Europe as well as experience helping Canadian organisations (including Interac) do the same. And we have specific experience in helping transit operators move to chips too.
2. The explosion in mobile. We know how to help organisations go from chips to devices following flexible product and service strategies. We’ve worked on mobile payments and mobile identity for some of the world’s largest telecommunications companies, including Vodafone, Verizon and Telefonica.
3. The escape to the cloud. We know how to help organisations go from devices to clouds without opening up cracks in the systems that might be catastrophic downstream. We’ve been chosen by start-ups and legacy providers alike to help develop new online transaction systems and perform the crucial risk analysis that such systems demand.

Transactions are hard. They have to work every time, at scale and in the face of everything that people and technology can throw at them. Making them secure means understanding the technology, the business and the social context. We have track record of doing this, stretching back to our very first assignment for the Bank of England Central Gilts Office in 1986, and are looking forward to support organisations in the US who want to do the same.

You can follow CHYP USA Inc. at @chypUSA and continue to keep up with the latest thinking at the intersection of digital identity, digital money and digital networks at Tomorrow’s Transactions, where our US team will soon be posting their perspectives on the evolution of the secure electronic transactions in the US..

These are personal opinions and should not be misunderstood as representing the opinions of 
Consult Hyperion or any of its clients or suppliers