Written by 
I’m having fun at Finovate Fall 2014. But I want to tell everyone else here a secret. If you want to see the future of #fintech, pay attention to Dr. Who. He’s already shown you.
The illuminated amongst us have long known that Dr. Who sends us secret coded messages that tell us about the future and so it is the most important television programme in the world for fintech folks. Therefore I was upset to see that the secret was out on Twitter.
All the #fintech people out there will love the fact the latest #DrWho episode had them robbing a bank 🙂
— Kristoffer Lawson (@Setok) September 21, 2014
So now you know where I get my ideas. The truth is out there, as they say, if you know the URL. But then you already know that Dr. Who is where I get my ideas from.
When I said that I was genuinely surprised to find my talk on digital identity featured on TED, I meant it.
From “You don’t have to be psychic but it helps” at Tomorrow’s Transactions.
I’m not making this up. It’s true. I’d picked up a number of ideas from my colleagues at Consult Hyperion and had assembled them into an identity ideas package to take to a few clients. I was looking around for a better non-technical narrative when I happened to be watching Dr. Who with my sons one day and… suddenly… it was all clear.
The variant I propose is to be known as Dr. Brown’s psychic paper, named in honour of the Prime Minister who will scrap the current ID card scheme to universal acclaim and replace it with something fit for the 21st century (namely, this scheme). Unlike Dr. Who’s psychic paper, Dr. Brown’s psychic paper only shows the viewer what he or she wants to see if the holder has the relevant credential.
From It’s crazy, but it might just work at Tomorrow’s Transactions.
This turned out to be a wonderful, wonderful happenstance.
First of all, we all grew up with Dr. Who, so it engenders warm nostalgia. Now, obviously, there’s an age-related component to this. My favourite monsters were the cybermen and I always wanted to be Brigadier-General Lethbridge-Stewart, so that gives my age away, but my kids look forward to it every week just as I did. Secondly, because the scriptwriters are skilled at engaging a non-technical audience we can piggyback on their imagery to interact with that same audience. And finally, because it’s fun!
From RUSI and all that at Tomorrow’s Transactions.
When I used Dr. Who’s psychic paper to explain how identity should work to support transactions in an online world, I think people really go it. I wrote a few papers and articles on the topic in which I also stressed that the “tap and go” convenience of NFC would be a way of making identity work for real. And then…
Dr. Who got on a London bus (to Mars, which I think is the number 521 from Waterloo) using his psychic paper, thus demonstrating to the whole world that NFC is the future interface of choice. This gave me the full package, so when I was asked to explain to banks or a telco or whoever what the future digital wallet should look like, I told that it was something like psychic paper.
Whatever description you chose, his Psychic Paper is exactly what a digital wallet should aspire to be
From Dr. Who and the Psychic Paper – at trishburgess.com
Indeed. Psychic paper (or the iPhone 6, as well call it) show us everything we need to know about he future of financial transactions. It manages the individual’s identity and displays the transaction-relevant attributes only people authorised to see them. Everyone else sees nothing. Nothing at all.
“95% of fraud prevention is good customer recognition”, says Alisdair Faulkner @ThreatMetrix #ISMGFraudSummit pic.twitter.com/oPxm3OBxv5
— Mathew J Schwartz (@euroinfosec) September 23, 2014
95% of everything is good customer recognition, isn’t it. And this is why the combination of secure hardware, local biometric and authentication and transaction-specific credentials (hello ApplePay) can deliver both the security and the privacy through a simple and convenient tap that the new retail environment demands. Apple are not visionaries and nor am I. Dr. Who had it right from the start.
