Seven Money-Making Schemes That Sound Too Good To Be True – But Are True

According to the old adage, “If it’s too good to be true, it’s a scam”. In times of rampant fraud, like we’re seeing in the crypto world now, many people are repeating this warning. Take the OP of this LinkedIn Post for example. I’m sure they’re all well-meaning. I’m also sure that their warning is … Read more

Calling BS On The Meme “Banks Privatize Profits And Socialize Losses”

I first heard the meme “Banks privatize profits and socialize losses” soon after some banks were bailed out during the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-8 in USA. The narrative was, when banks do well, they distribute their profits to their employees and shareholders whereas when they do badly, they palm off their losses to taxpayers … Read more

How Do Banks Make Money From Credit Card Business?

Banks have created the impression that they love credit cardholders who pay only the minimum balance every month and revolve their outstandings so that they can earn juicy interest off of them. This has led the Average Joe / Jane credit cardholder to think that banks make money only on interest, and believe that they … Read more

Economic Times Publishes My Piece On “PPI Via UPI” Payments

Finance is full of hair splitting as I warned in Hair Splitting In Finance. Payments is no exception. In Retail Payments Primer, I highlighted that credit card, debit card, wallet, UPI and other retail methods of payments (MOPs) are not equal. Now National Payments Corporation of India would like us to appreciate that there are … Read more

ISO 20022: Waiting For Godot Moment

Limitation in field length of payment messages causes endless number of problems in electronic payments. Let me give a few examples: I was unable to fit the payee name MCS MERIDIAN CLIENT ACCOUNT HOUSE RENT 98 MERIDIAN PLACE JUN 2008 in the payee field of my bank’s payment screen. My bank told me to change … Read more

Utilities: New Source Of Subscription Trap

Media, OTT, SaaS and other recurring-revenue businesses generate revenues from subscriptions funded by credit card- (or debit card-) based standing instructions that automatically charge the cardholder’s account every month. As their consumer, if you want to stop a subscription, you’d want to click a cancel button on their website or app and be done with … Read more

How AI Can Take Readability Of Bills And Statements To The Next Level

In Bills And Statements Are Hard To Decipher, we noted that it was very hard to read bills and statements from banks, ecommerce companies, retailers and other industries. We took two examples and did a deep dive to understand the full extent of the indecipherability problem: Ecommerce Bill Bank Statement In this post, we will … Read more