Product

Test Drive: SafetyNet – Overdraft Avoidance Open Banking Fintech

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SafetyNet is a UK Open Banking fintech that provides Overdraft Avoidance. While the uninitiated can Google “overdraft protection” for a prosaic definition of the term, Stanley Bing offers the following tongue-in-cheek description for one of the most lucrative products of banks: No matter what you spend with your debit card, even if you have no money in … Read more

AWS Snowmobile: Because Data Still Needs To Be Transported Physically

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AWS Snowmobile is an 18-wheel truck that physically transports Exabyte-scale data from customers’ premises to AWS Regions in a 45 feet container. For the uninitiated: 1 Exabyte = 1000 Petabyte = 1,000,000 Terabytes = 1,000,000,000 Gigabytes. AWS Regions are separate geographic areas that Amazon uses to house its AWS infrastructure. These are distributed around the … Read more

Column Will Help Open Banking To Scale New Heights

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Fintechs have gestured for years that they will disrupt traditional banks with their shiny apps. When asked uncomfortable questions about banking charters, finsurgents have brushed off those questions with the offhand remark that a charter is commodity. Apart from some of those trash-talking fintechs, nobody got disrupted. Not surprising because a charter is a moat, … Read more

Are Digital Natives Losing Their Data Chops? – Part 2

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In Are Digital Natives Losing Their Data Chops?, we saw six examples of digital natives showing signs of losing their data chops. The litany of such new age tech companies seems to be never-ending. In this post, I will cover eight more examples. #7. BREADCRUMBS The SDR from this San Francisco-based lead scoring startup fixed up … Read more

Blockchain Loyalty Programs – Sizzling Or Fizzling?

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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

Open Banking: EU v. USA

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Open Banking is a flop, it’s too costly, clunky, and businesses struggle to make money from it. – Anne Boden, CEO of Starling Bank, to Treasury Committee (Source). With a regulatory mandate and after five years of incessant media buzz, EU Open Banking recently crossed 5 million users. See Open banking passes five million user … Read more

Merchants Give Middle Finger To RBI Emandate

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At the conclusion of my post entitled How RBI Emandate Can Become Consumer Savior, I had outlined two alternative operating models for the new RBI Emandate. For the uninitiated, Emandate, a new regulation that came into effect in India from 1 October 2021, changes how banks process recurring payments and auto debits (“Standing Instructions”) set … Read more