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Undercover at Money2020, our man in Las Vegas ls lost in booths, babes and benjamins. But can agent 0111 stop a killer new technology from falling into the wrong hands? It’s Main Street vs Infinite Loop in the major new blogbuster from CHYP End… welcome to… Pay Another Day
Part 11. Licence to Bill
“Well,” said S., “tell me about the toys old man.”
Bond started to tell S. about some of the things he’d seen on the exhibition floor and what things he’d heard people talking about in the corridors.
“Thing is, S., what I don’t understand is why these payment bods call their shindig ‘Money2020’ when all of the really interesting stuff is about identity, authentication, privacy and that sort of thing. Seems to me that once those sort of things are taken care of, the rest of the payment malarkey is just a bit of bookkeeping.”
S. didn’t want his opinons, though, just the facts. So Bond used his super-memory to tell S. about the technologies that he’d seen: apparently, NFC and tokenisation are all the rage, and improved “onboarding” (Bond wasn’t entirely sure what that meant) is the next big thing. There was also a lot of talk about financial inclusion, and this had a lot to do with mobile phones.
When Bond returned to his room, he found an envelope pushed under the door. He opened it carefully, and found two photographs inside. They looked as if they’d been taken by a long lens looking through a window. The first showed @dgwbirch looking at some sort of chart that seemed to be something to do with tokenisation.
The second seemed to be something to do with that indispensable handbook on the future of the industry, “Identity is the New Money“.
But what did they mean? And who had put them under his door? Clearly, someone wanted Bond to know that @dgwbirch was in this payments business up to his neck. Someone was telling Bond that @dgwbirch’s stupid tweets about South West Trains were just a front and the blind the scenes he was somehow involved in the really cool stuff going on in the payments world. This, Bond thought, was where the service should focus their efforts. Not only on @dgwbirch, but on the brains behind his operation back at CHYP End.
G. wanted a full report, together with detailed expenses claims and receipts, so Bond went off to see her. He finished by telling her his most important conclusion, the one he’d saved for last.
“Look”, said Bond, “it’s very clear to me that if you want to know something about the future of payments then you need to penetrate Consult Hyperion. I say we infiltrate a deep cover operative as an employee to keep an eye on them from the inside, and have them report back via a dead letter drop round the back of The Keystone.”
“Well,” said S., ever mindful of the department’s budget, “we could do that. Or we could read their thought-leadership Tomorrow’s Transactions blog at www.tomorrowstransactions.com, or attend one of their Tomorrow’s Transactions Unconferences, or get a ticket for their annual Tomorrow’s Transactions Forum or subscribe to their series of Tomorrow’s Transactions Podcasts.”
Fair enough, Bond was think as S. went through the options.
Bond walked back to the bar.
So it was true. The mobile wallet did exist, and A.P.P.L.E had snatched it from under the noses of M.C.X. The Cold War was over, and the Phoney War was about to begin. Bond grabbed the gin and tonic and let the magic liquid do its work.
Then he stood, turned, and walked out of the casino, blinking into the lunchtime sun. He waited in the taxi line, glancing at the boarding pass for Seattle on his phone. One day it will all settle down in the payments world, he thought, and no-one will need consultants any more. One day, he hoped, there would be peace. Just not yet.
See you all at Money2020 next year.
