Are Digital Natives Losing Their Data Chops? – Part 2

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

Why Doesn’t UPI / A2A RTP Provide Scam / Fraud Protection?

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

Blockchain Loyalty Programs – Sizzling Or Fizzling?

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

Fraud v Scam: Who Is Liable For Cybercrime

We took the following example of a cybercrime in Why Is It Hard To Catch Cybercriminals? Joe uses a digital payment to buy something from Jane, and does not get what he ordered. (For the uninitiated, A2A RTP stands for Account-to-Account Real Time Payment, where money goes from sender’s bank account to receiver’s bank account … Read more

Atmanirbhar Bharat: Necessary But Not Sufficient

On the back of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many companies in USA and EU have shut down their operations in Russia, effectively stopping supplies of their products and services to the invader. The West has kicked out many Russian banks from the global payment messaging network SWIFT, which has made it very difficult for Russia … Read more

Why Is It Hard To Catch Cybercriminals?

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

Unpacking The B2B2C Business Model

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: EU v. USA

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

Why Does Spray-And-Pray Marketing Still Work?

Somebody was recently perplexed on LinkedIn about the kind of marketing adopted by a leading used cars portal: Cold Calling was earlier done by telecallers. Now it’s done via pre-recorded messages. Lately, there has been a bombardment of such robocalls from this company. I’m not able to understand the strategy here. Not everyone is selling … Read more

Convenience Needs A Measure. Exhibit A: Text Blaze

I received the following notification from a product I’d recently signed up for: You saved 3 minutes this week by using Text Blaze. Underwhelming, right? I thought so, too. Text Blaze is a nifty Chrome Extension that works like a keyboard shortcut but for autofilling your online content. I was immediately attracted to this San … Read more