My Two Cents On PayTM Kerfuffle

PayTM is the first digital payment product I’ve used at scale in India. When RBI enforced the two factor authentication mandate for online payments, bill payments became a major PITA. By requiring users to fill credit card number, expiration date, and half a dozen fields, Reg 2FA caused tremendous friction. After they received the OTP, … Read more

Power Of Branding In B2B

According to the popular narrative, branding is needed only in B2C. That’s not true. Branding plays an equally important role for B2B products and services. For the purpose of this blog post, we will use the following definition of branding: Branding “Branding” is endowing products and services with the power of a brand. Where a … Read more

How To Resolve Pricing Paradoxes

In Five Pricing Paradoxes, we covered many pricing paradoxes and speculated on why they happen. In this post, we will examine if and how they need to be fixed. Is There A Problem? While there’s a logic to pricing paradoxes, we cannot expect the Average Customer to accept them. As a result, they will complain about … Read more

Five Pricing Paradoxes

According to common wisdom, middleman adds a margin, so his price will be higher than the original manufacturer’s price. Why do D2C brands price their products higher on their own website and make them cheaper on marketplaces like Amazon? I always assumed buying from their website is cheaper, given they save on commissions. What's the … Read more

Season’s Greetings

Season’s Greetings & Best Wishes for a Happy New Year! Welcome back to GTM360 Blog. We published 49 posts last year. The Top 10 posts in 2023 were: #10. Unpacking “Embedded Finance” From Consumer POV #9. Calling BS On The Meme “Banks Privatize Profits And Socialize Losses” #8. Revisiting Recurring Payments On The First Anniversary Of RBI Emandate #7. Shortselling … Read more

Why ChatGPT Won’t Kill Coders

In Will ChatGPT Kill Coders?, we examined many demand suppressors that threatened to kill coders’ jobs. We also alluded to DEMAND STIMULANTS, which work as counterweights by boosting demand for coders. In this post, we will do a deep dive into Demand Stimulants. Comprising new computing paradigms and markets, demand stimulants not only arrest the … Read more

CBDC – Utopia or Dystopia?

Central Bank Digital Currency is digital cash. Like paper currency notes, it’s issued by the central bank and does not bear interest. Also, like paper currency notes, it’s legal tender. At its inception, CBDC was supposed to be based on the blockchain. We don’t hear much about that facet of it nowadays. At least 130 … Read more

Shattering The Myth Of Exorbitant Credit Card MDR

Since times immemorial, merchants have complained that banks charge exorbitant fees for processing credit card payments. Called Merchant Discount Rate (MDR), this fee is around 2% of the transaction value, as described in my blog post titled Credit Card Primer – Interchange, MDR & Surcharge. In this post, I will shatter the myth that MDR … Read more