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Do You Want a Million Dollars?

I was delighted and fascinated to see that the Gates Foundation has issued a “Grand Challenge” on enabling universal acceptance of mobile money payments.  The Foundation’s previous best-known challenges have been in healthcare, notably for toilets and condoms, so this is quite a change! The Foundation is soliciting two-page proposals on innovative devices, software or business […]

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Back from the Future: Bitcoin2014 Musings

Last week I was in Amsterdam for the second annual conference hosted by the The Bitcoin Foundation. As a strategist and advocate for ever-better payment solutions, I was very curious to learn how the Bitcoin protocol and its emerging enablers can address some of the most intractable challenges facing payments. For the most part, payments […]

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The Biggest Mobile Payments Story You’ve Never Heard

As we move into 2014 – yet (again) the year when many say mobile payments are destined to gain traction – let’s look at some key developments in the space. No, I’m not talking about the newest pilot participant in ISIS or whether Apple will be the new sheriff in town. Instead, let’s look to […]

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The State of Payments: 2014

What a year it has been! Twelve months ago, there were still people in our industry who didn’t know what Bitcoin was. There were still people who believed that EMV would roll out in the U.S. just like it did in the U.K. There were still people who thought that the developing world would build […]

Tags: state of payments

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It’s Complicated: What we can learn from the developing world about payments

I was fortunate enough to spend a day yesterday at Bill Maurer’s IMTFI (Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion) conference at UC Irvine.  Bill is an anthropologist, and his institute funds fascinating small projects in developing countries that look at how people interact with money.  (IMTFI, in turn, is funded by the Bill & […]

Tags: Financial Inclusion

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Money2020: Impressions & Observations

I’ve nearly recovered from the payments overload that was Money2020 last week in Las Vegas – it was initially exhilarating, then incredibly exhausting, but I had a fantastic time. Here’s my admittedly subjective take based on having attended only two sessions (one of which I moderated) and stood in the back for only part of […]

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The Bill from Ipanema: A Foundation for Brazilian Mobile Payments

I’m just back from a trip to Brazil and while I was there, the government introduced long-awaited legislation on mobile payments.  This is an important task as Brazil now has 265 million mobile subscribers  – more than 1 per inhabitant. Needless to say, the machinations of politics kicked off immediately and there will undoubtedly be […]

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Mobile Money in the Americas: Regulation, Infrastructure and Business Models

This is conference week for me! Today I’m sitting at Mobile Money Americas in Mexico City, with a fascinating group of people working on mobile wallets in countries throughout the region. Of the 129 live mobile money projects worldwide (and let’s not get distracted, right now, by defining that…), 17 are live in the LAC region, with […]

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It’s A Decoupled World

I had the great good fortune on Tuesday to sit in on the first day of the annual conference of the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion. IMTFI is housed at U.C. Irvine and led by anthropologist Bill Maurer. The mission is to support research on money and technology among the world’s poorest people: […]

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FinovateSpring2011: Day Two / Session Three

Glenbrook’s Jacqueline Chilton is blogging from FinovateSpring 2011. This is one of several posts; you can find an index of our coverage here. The format for Finovate is fast and furious.  No PowerPoint – all demo.  Each company has seven minutes. Expensify “Expense reports that don’t suck” Quickly add and edit expenses, attach receipts, customize the […]

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Thinking Through Moves and Countermoves on the Durbin Chessboard

After months of speculation and hand-wringing, last Friday we finally got a relatively complete reading on how the Federal Reserve will likely implement the prescribed regulation of debit interchange and debit network competition. My partner, Carol Benson, has also shared a summary of how various payment domains and players might be affected in the near […]