Photo: Scott Loftesness A few weeks ago I joined my client Raj Jain, CEO of RS Software, for my third visit to India. RS Software is headquartered in Kolkata which was our first stop for the annual general meeting of shareholders. After that, we visited...
I'm back from two days at Consensus 2016 in NYC, and reporting as promised into my investigation of the Five Big Questions. 1. Bitcoin technology: will the problems (versions, processing time, scalability) be resolved? Yes. My belief that we are all writing this...
I'm headed to New York next week for the CoinDesk Consensus conference..."Making Blockchain Real". I'm going because I'm trying to get my head around some big questions. I normally have a sense, even with new things, of the path forward. Not in this case! Here are...
As the Internet of Things (IoT) gains momentum, people are starting to speculate about how it will be monetized and where payments will fit in this world of the future. Some think what’s needed is already what their company does best. How fortunate for them! Others...
As new forms of digital payments begin to take hold, the old assumptions no longer work. What does it mean to issue a card when there is no card? How can transactions be risk-managed when payments credentials are masked and scrambled by design? And what is the...
We’ve been working with bitcoin at Glenbrook for a few years now, teaching about it in our boot camps, and holding one-day workshops on math-based currencies and blockchain technology. I have one conclusion. The focus of the evolution of digital money is shifting....
Surprising disruptions and unanticipated consequences abound in payments. Sometimes, it’s just a rule change that makes all the difference. In 2001, the NACHA rule enabling ad hoc web debits was put in place, primarily at the behest of banks who wanted to make it...
A new wave of payment capabilities is hitting shores around the world. This wave is made up of better, faster, and cheaper “credit-push” systems. That means that transactions enter the payments systems from the sender’s bank (like a wire transfer) rather than from...
How does disruption happen in mature industries? Clayton Christensen famously wrote about this phenomenon in his classic book “The Innovator's Dilemma.” Most commonly, the new disruptor enters from below - by providing new capabilities to those unserved by the...
