How Can Fincumbents Grow When Banks Are Shedding Customers?

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In their diatribes about the underbanked, unbanked and financial inclusion, many suppliers of financial services technologies to banks (aka “fincumbents“) and members of the digerati threaten banks with the risk of losing customers to prepaid cards, P2P lending platforms, money transmitters, and other types of fintechs. In their urge to dish out free, unsolicited advice, … Read more

Apple Pay Puts Banks Squarely At The Center Of Mobile Payments

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Like many, I’ve long held that nothing is broken with plastic cards for instore payments and made the case for mobile wallets to stick to gift, loyalty, ID and other forms of non-payment cards (see Mobile Wallets Should Fix What’s Broken – And It Ain’t Payments). Until I read this line about Apple Pay: “Every … Read more

Walking The Tightrope Between Driving Repeat Purchase And Rewarding Loyalty

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I recently received an offer for INR 100 discount on my next trip on Meru Cabs, India’s leading cab dispatch company. To redeem this offer, I’d need to enter a certain code when I used the company’s mobile app to book my next ride. My first reaction to this offer was, “How the heck am … Read more

IT Services Company Gains Massive Visibility Without Any Advertising

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Here’s our latest success story: IT Services Company Gains Massive Visibility Without Any Advertising Thought leadership generates huge exposure among decision makers With a solid track record of providing development and testing services for one of the largest streetworks systems in the United Kingdom, this midsized IT services company gained substantial expertise and experience on … Read more

Mast Kalandar Shows How Not To Run A Loyalty Program

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Mast Kalandar is a North Indian quick service restaurant chain that has branches in Bangalore, Pune and a few other Indian cities. I happened to visit one of its outlets recently. After placing my order at the cashier and making the payment, I received the receipt for my purchase. By chance, I noticed a mention … Read more

Calling BS On Banking The Unbanked

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“Financial inclusion”, “banking the unbanked”, blah blah blah. Call them what you want. But they all mean the following: Financial Inclusion / Banking the Unbanked – What They Mean People want to borrow money only from banks; people want to deposit their savings only in banks. But, since they can’t access a bank, they’re forced … Read more

Will Publishers Survive The Mobile Onslaught?

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Looks like mobile has started impoverishing publishers, too, since I wrote Will Mobile Impoverish Bloggers? two years ago. Smartphones and tablets are causing trouble for publishers for more reasons than one:   Their smaller displays support fewer ads  People have a lower propensity to click ads on mobile (unless they’re like the nicely obfuscated Google Ads but … Read more

Frictionless Loyalty Programs – FAASO’s Case Study

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The quick service restaurant chain FAASO’s recently launched MOBILE wrAPP, an ordering, payment cum loyalty app. Available on Android, iOS and Windows, the app lets users locate stores, browse the menu, place delivery or takeaway orders, and make online or cash on delivery payments. To incent repeat purchase, the company credits INR 400 (~US$ 6.67) … Read more

Does Cloud Increase Vendor Lockin Risk?

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For all the marketingspeak from technology providers about open systems blah blah blah, seasoned CIOs know that every software purchase is accompanied by a certain level of risk of getting locked in to that particular vendor. The risk is caused by user comfort, proprietary programming language and opaque database structures, among other factors. Cue to … Read more