Technologically speaking, the credit card as we know it should have vanished long ago. It’s surely not got much longer .
It’s still worth stealing credit cards, but not for much longer
Category: Payment systems
For the Chancellor’s cheque-list today
Why are people who use debit cards, PingIt and other modern contrivances required to pay for people who want to mess around posting pieces of paper to each other? It’s time to either draw a line under cheques or shift to full cost recovery pricing on cheque books.
Blockchain blockhead
I gave a talk on the blockchain to the Vendorcom Cryptocurrency SIG, putting forward a couple of fairly radical ideas about Bitcoin, the blockchain and the future. Or so I thought.
“Fast” is so last year
The era of “faster payments” is over, even before it’s begun in the US. We’re now into the era of “instant payments” and that’s great, because we’re also in an era of “instant commerce”
Well, yes, withdrawing cash is suspicious
If people want cash, it’s pretty reasonable to ask them what it’s for, since we all have to suffer the externalities.
In-app and on-message in Barcelona
Wandering around #MWC15 in Barcelona this year I got involved in a bunch of conversations about Apple Pay, Loop, NFC and so on. But I thought that focus on the physical, in-store interface, could be diverting people away from the central strategic shift to in-app payments.
The Fintech Fortean Times starts here
I wonder if there is room for a blog that brings together payments and the paranormal? A Fintech Fortean Times, if you will? In an age where the Tory chairman of the Parliamentary Group on Integrated Healthcare is recommending that the National Health Service starts to treat patients with astrology and homeopathy, we need to be open to new thinking, don’t we?
Fungibility and feasibility
Whatever Bitcoin is, it isn’t cash. Cash is fungible. I’m not saying whether we need e-cash or e-cash fungibility or not, but it’s interesting to consider the ramifications.
Bitcoin isn’t killing it in retail, even for porn
The figures show very clearly that Bitcoin isn’t being used as a retail payment mechanism. Will it ever be? I wouldn’t think so, but that doesn’t mean that cryptocurrency will never be used in retail.
What is bitcoin? As opposed to Bitcoin, that is
Oh dear. I have such a terrible attention span and I’m so easily distracted. I didn’t get more than a few pages into “The Age of Cryptocurrency” without setting off for Google.
