Official Blog of GTM360 Marketing Solutions
All my life I answered the question in the title of this blog post with a resounding “Of course, I own my shares”. That changed after I read an article on MIT Technology Review a few years ago. According to @techreview, when you buy shares in dematerialized form, you don’t actually own the shares – … Read more
There’s a lot of buzz around cybercrime. Not a week goes by when we don’t hear of someone or the other losing money to scammers and fraudsters via UPI and other A2A RTPs. Let’s consider the following ubiquituous cybercrime described in Why Is It So Hard To Catch Cybercriminals?. Joe uses UPI to buy something … Read more
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
In Why Is It Hard To Catch Cybercriminals?, we took the following example of a cybercrime: Joe pays Jane online for something and does not receive what he was promised. We then saw why it was hard to catch the cybercriminal (Jane in this case). In this second part, we will examine who is liable … Read more
When the authorities say cash leads to tax evasion, counterfeiting, etc., the common man (“Joe”) thinks it’s because cash is anonymous. When they goad him to ditch cash and move to digital payments, Joe assumes that digital payment will eliminate fraud because it’s not anonymous. Then, one day, Joe uses a digital payment like UPI … Read more
If you sell to a business, you’re B2B. If you sell to a consumer, you’re B2C. That much is clear. According to the popular narrative, if you sell to a business, which sells to a consumer, you’re B2B2C. That’s not correct. The true B2B2C is when Your company sells a product / service to a … Read more
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
In Credit Card Best Practices – Part 1, I argued that whether credit card is boon or bane is shaped by whether you use it or let yourself get used by it. I then outlined five best practices for using credit card in a way that it serves the cardholder’s interest. In this second part, … Read more
On the one hand, there are people who think credit card is one of the greatest inventions of mankind. On the other hand, there are people who think credit card is a weapon of mass financial destruction. Maximalists put as many of their spends on credit card as possible. Haters shun credit card like the … Read more
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