Category: Uncategorized

[Jane Adams] Two tiny snippets from today’s Prepaid Cards conference, organised by VRL.

At a recent birthday party for the 13 year old son of one of the delegates, 23 of the 25 presents he received were gift cards.

And my befuddled habit of trying to feed my house keys into Tube barrier ticket readers isn’t me being stupid, it’s me being ahead of the curve. In Hong Kong, one of additional uses for the Octopus card is building access – participating transit operator NTR is also a major property developer in the region and flats it sells come with an Octopus card for access.

[Dave Birch] According to APACS there are now more than 140 million plastic cards in use in the UK, with almost 68% of spending accounted for by debit cards. This year, total plastic card use is expected to top £320 billion, against a predicted £277 billion of cash payments. One of the reasons for the growth in cards is, naturally, the growth in POS terminals and (insert fanfare sound effect here) the UK’s one millionth POS terminal has gone online (well, the one millionth TID has been issued, which may not be the same thing). As of August 2006, APACS say that of the 900,000 “face to face” (ie, attended) POS terminals in the UK only 50,000 are not chip and PIN.

Technorati Tags: credit cards, debit cards, fraud, payments, retail

Continue reading “One millionth POS terminals in UK”

[Dave Birch] I noticed an article about a large US bank planning to issue digital certificates to retail customers.  I wanted to pass on some of our experience in this area to explain why I don’t think this is the best way forward for banks outside the US.

Technorati Tags: business, ID cards, internet

Continue reading “Hard or soft?”

[Dave Birch] I was at the Bank of England earlier on. Bet you didn’t know that there’s an actual counter in there with actual tellers…

Technorati Tags: ATM, payments

Continue reading “Central banking today”

[Dave Birch] The latest podcast is a discussion of Visa’s strategy for contactless payments in Europe.

Technorati Tags: contactless

[Dave Birch] It is, now and then, interesting to see what normal people (ie, people who don’t read this blog) think about what the payments industry regards as innovations. Here’s an example, discussing what the poster calls the the most ill-considered banking product ever devised.

Technorati Tags: ATM, banking, credit cards

Continue reading “The most ill-considered banking product ever devised? I doubt it.”

[Dave Birch] Jerry Fishenden pointed me to this extract from Mythbusters.  My kids love Mythbusters, which is a show on the Discovery Channel where a couple of guys set up experiments to test "myths" like: would a penny dropped from a skyscraper kill someone?  I like the show because they design and build the experiments themselves: they don’t take anyone’s word for anything.  I wonder if they’ll be showing Episode 59 at Biometrics 2006?

Technorati Tags: biometrics

Continue reading “The myth of fingerprint authentication?”

[Dave Birch] It’s hard to validate — I mean really, really validate — someone’s real identity in a transaction.  By "hard", of course, I also mean "expensive".  That’s why transaction mechanisms that don’t validate real identity (eg, credit cards) are easy to use and cost-effective.  Luckily, we don’t often really need actual identity validated to conduct a transaction.  What we need is reasonable assurance that the parties to a transaction are authorised.  So, when you are conceptually carded, it should be to see that you are over 21 (or whatever), not who you are.  There’s a big difference.  Over time, the credentials that are being presented begin to acquire a history, a reputation if you like.  Once can certainly envisage markets in which transactions depend on that reputation: not "snapshot" credentials or identity no matter how well validated.

Technorati Tags: authentication, ID cards, privacy, security

Continue reading “Tokens mean credentials mean reputations”

[Dave Birch] I’ve been in Milan for a client, running a workshop for bankers, which gave me a chance to catch up on the Italian payments world. One of the ways in which it is interestingly different from the UK market is the rapid growth of prepaid cards here. The Post Office (Poste Italiane) has three-quarters of the market with its Postepay card which is based on the Visa Electron platform. It has more than 2 million cards in circulation already and 20,000 new ones are issued each week. Why is prepaid so successful here?

Technorati Tags: banking, prepay

Continue reading “Innovative Italians”

[Dave Birch] This month’s Financial World magazine (not available online) has an article by David Lascelles of the CSFI on their annual “Banking Banana Skins” report. They survey 500 “financial practitioners and analysts” around the world to find out what they think are the biggest risks to the banking industry over the coming year. It’s a good way of working out where the attention of the people who runs banks is focused (hint: not here).

Technorati Tags: banking, payments

Continue reading “Who cares about payments?”