BFSI

PINless Card Payments – Innovative Or Harebrained?

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I’ve been asked many times to weigh in on the new PINless regime for credit and debit card payments in India. Most recently it was on Quora, where I was asked to answer the following question: Why is it not required to enter a PIN to authenticate a credit or debit card in many countries? … Read more

One – And Maybe Only – Way To Revive Payments Banks

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Every time I go to this leading public sector bank, I see a long line of people outside the branch. “Outside the branch” is the operative phrase because these people literally stand outside the branch. I found out that they’re migrant laborers who queue up to send money from large cities where they work to their family … Read more

Communications – Low Hanging Fruit For Enhancing CX

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In Poor Communications: The Seventh Deadly CX Killer, I described the painful experience of activating the new credit cards I recently received from my bank. To recap, I didn’t get a paper PIN mailer as was customary during the previous renewals, and the instructions given by the bank on how to activate the new cards on … Read more

Poor Communications: The Seventh Deadly CX Killer

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In Killing The Six Deadly CX Killers, I attributed six key reasons for poor customer experience (CX) and what brands could do to get rid of them, thus enhancing their CX. In this post, I’ll cover the seventh deadly CX killer: Poor communications. I have a Visa credit card issued by a Top 5 private … Read more

Why Have Payments Banks Flopped?

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When Payments Banks were launched in 2014-15, they were greeted with a lot of fanfare. They were expected to bring hundreds of millions of unbanked Indians into the folds of organized financial services because their digital-only footprint would make it cost-effective from them to go to the rural hinterlands where traditional banks with branches have not … Read more

Demystifying The Ubiquitous Sample Size Of 2000

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Back in the day, we learned in statistics that you need a sample size of at least 2% of the size of population to make statistically significant inferences about the population. In common speak, the expression “statistically significant” means “valid”. Nevertheless, if you’re like me, you regularly come across surveys conducted on sample size of … Read more

Why Do People Lie With Charts?

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In Three Ways To Lie With Charts, we saw the following tactics: Slippery Slope Slide Floating Origin Fraud Dual Axis Deception The most common reason for people to lie with charts is that they are shilling some product, service or ideology and run into facts that derail their pitch, so they need to lie to continue … Read more

Blockchain – Calling BS On Decentralization & Resilience

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Since I wrote Flight Delay Insurance – Why Blockchain?, I’ve come across several updates that have reinforced my skeptical views around the claim of decentralization and raised new doubts about the touted advantage of resilience. UPDATE #1: SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE Let me take the following remark in my original post: Data is distributed across multiple … Read more