Utilities: New Source Of Subscription Trap

Media, OTT, SaaS and other recurring-revenue businesses generate revenues from subscriptions funded by credit card- (or debit card-) based standing instructions that automatically charge the cardholder’s account every month. As their consumer, if you want to stop a subscription, you’d want to click a cancel button on their website or app and be done with … Read more

How AI Can Take Readability Of Bills And Statements To The Next Level

In Bills And Statements Are Hard To Decipher, we noted that it was very hard to read bills and statements from banks, ecommerce companies, retailers and other industries. We took two examples and did a deep dive to understand the full extent of the indecipherability problem: Ecommerce Bill Bank Statement In this post, we will … Read more

Why Are Bills And Statements So Frigging Hard To Decipher?

People regularly complain that it’s very hard to decipher bills and statements from banks. Rant from Quora: Why are the description info on Bank Account Statements so confusing? We cannot find what is the debit for and from whom the payment / transfer has come in. End of the month when you see the statement … Read more

10 Best Answers For Peter Thiel Interview Question – Part 2

In 10 Best Answers For Peter Thiel Interview Question – Part 1, I gave five answers to the following Peter Thiel interview question: What is the one thing that’s true but nobody believes it when you tell them? In this second part, I’ll give five more. Here goes. #6. Fixed deposit beats inflation Matt Levine … Read more

People Buy From People But Must Get Used To Paying Numbers

Back in the day, when you wanted to pay Tom, you whipped out your cheque book, wrote Tom’s name in the payee field, and handed over the cheque to Tom. Things were simple. Then banks introduced electronic payments. You no longer paid Tom. You paid Tom’s Account Number and IFSC Code / Sort Code / … Read more

Five Reasons Why Amazon’s Sales Are Down By 33%

According to @sweatystartup, shipment volumes at a certain Amazon Distribution Center (“said DC”) are down from 75,000 to 50,000 packages a shift. Friend works at an Amazon distribution center. Volume down from 75,000 packages a shift to 50,000 or less. Hiring freeze began last week. Managers walking around mid shift offering optional vacation time (basically … Read more

Blockchain Loyalty Programs – Sizzling Or Fizzling?

I’ve been asked many times to share my take on the latest status of Rakuten Coin, an altcoin that I wrote about in How Blockchain Can Crack The Holy Grail Of Loyalty Programs four years ago. That is not strictly true. I’ve been asked only once, by someone on Twitter. @droskill: The Rakuten coin was launched … Read more

Fraud v Scam: Who Is Liable For Cybercrime

We took the following example of a cybercrime in Why Is It Hard To Catch Cybercriminals? Joe uses a digital payment to buy something from Jane, and does not get what he ordered. (For the uninitiated, A2A RTP stands for Account-to-Account Real Time Payment, where money goes from sender’s bank account to receiver’s bank account … Read more