Mitigating Fraud Does Not Pay The Bills

Many discussions on security standards emphasize how Chip + PIN and Two Factor Authentication reduce fraud loss and exhort countries using Magstripe / Chip + Signature and Single Factor Authentication (e.g. USA) to immediately migrate to the newer technologies. Take for instance the Finextra article entitled Campaign pushes for US adoption of chip and PIN. … Read more

Appealing To Millennials – The Challenge For PayZapp Mobile Wallet

Since I wrote HDFC Bank’s PayZapp Ends My Bill Payment Woes, I’ve made a few more bill payments using the mobile wallet. All of them went through successfully (knock on wood!). I’m even more convinced that PayZapp is the best way of paying bills for people who’ve tried out other alternatives. That said, PayZapp faces … Read more

Launching Conversion Rate Optimization For BFSI

In a recent interview with McKinsey, Citigroup CEO Michael L. Corbat alluded to shopping cart abandonment when he mentioned that today’s digital customers “just stop filling out the application” for financial products when they’re asked for “things that weren’t necessary”. Long a bugbear of ecommerce, this problem has started hampering the BFSI industry’s efforts to … Read more

Five Ways To Sweeten A Deal – Apart From Discount

Traditional retailers aka kirana stores sell almost everything at MRP* whereas modern retail aka supermarkets sell almost everything below MRP (for the unintiated, this and other India-specific terms are explained at end of the post). Since Indians are price-sensitive, modern retail should totally corner the Indian retail market, right? Wrong! Modern retail accounts for barely … Read more

Millennial Obsession Will Bankrupt Neobanks

Personally, I don’t find too many serious shortcomings in the digital banking offerings from my banks. On the contrary, virtually every neobank / fintech I’ve come across is little more than a leadgen tool. But that’s outside the purview of this blog post, the purpose of which is to do a reality check on the … Read more

Loyalty Gifts – Buy Or Earn?

Those of us who redeem our loyalty points on gift portals will have inevitably come across a gift or two that was appealing to us but was beyond our reward points balance. On some gift portals, it’s possible to pick up the goodies by simply paying up the difference with cash e.g. Lufthansa WorldShop, IHG, … Read more

Secret Of Survival Of Bank Branches

From personal experience and anecdotal evidence, there’s no question that retail banking customers are increasingly moving to digital channels to conduct everyday banking transactions like balance inquiry, statement download, and so on. Notwithstanding the pronounced shift in customer preference to digital channels, bank branches are far from dead. In fact, according to some reports, they’re … Read more