Role Of Business Analyst In Payments

This blog post is a slightly edited version of my answer to the following Quora question: What is the role of a business analyst in the payments domain? I assume that the question refers to “payments technology” domain and consider the case of a Business Analyst (BA) who works for a tech vendor that provides … Read more

10 Best Answers For Peter Thiel Interview Question – Part 2

In 10 Best Answers For Peter Thiel Interview Question – Part 1, I gave five answers to the following Peter Thiel interview question: What is the one thing that’s true but nobody believes it when you tell them? In this second part, I’ll give five more. Here goes. #6. Fixed deposit beats inflation Matt Levine … Read more

People Buy From People But Must Get Used To Paying Numbers

Back in the day, when you wanted to pay Tom, you whipped out your cheque book, wrote Tom’s name in the payee field, and handed over the cheque to Tom. Things were simple. Then banks introduced electronic payments. You no longer paid Tom. You paid Tom’s Account Number and IFSC Code / Sort Code / … Read more

Column Will Help Open Banking To Scale New Heights

Fintechs have gestured for years that they will disrupt traditional banks with their shiny apps. When asked uncomfortable questions about banking charters, finsurgents have brushed off those questions with the offhand remark that a charter is commodity. Apart from some of those trash-talking fintechs, nobody got disrupted. Not surprising because a charter is a moat, … 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