Banking – Page 4

I just can’t help myself

I have a very dull confession to make. I love playing those lovely little hashtag games on Twitter. You know the ones. Where someone takes a category of culture e.g. film, book, song, band, celebrity and then adds something to the mix such as a witty satirical angle or just links to food or booze.

So you get a random group of people coming up with something very(?) amusing as shown above. I am not sure why I am so drawn to these things? I think the reason is that I like the little mental challenge they present. They also provide a little moment of joy. They are essentially a task to combine two pieces of existing information that you have e.g. a celebrity name and something related to alcohol, and come up with something new and preferably funny. As you can see from the screen shots I am also not that good at them.

They offer up a little bit of lateral thinking to exercise the connection of neurons. I wish their were more banking related ones although I can imagine that would quickly descend into banker bashing territory (it is where the laughs are though). I remember Chris Skinner doing a post which had a banking crisis and films mixed together type list. I even submitted my own rip roaringly funny suggestion of ‘A few dud men’.

What I would also like is someway of replicating a similar thing inside my place of work. A well populated and well used Twitteresque network would make things a bit easier…maybe one day, but I am sure it would work. Start off playing for fun using project/product names and food to create hilarity. Segue sneakily into making them work related by trying to get people to join two ideas around a central theme to make an innovative (or funny) idea? Yes I agree it is a long shot and I am beginning to think this post is just a vague attempt to justify the time I spend playing hashtag games. #BankerPlayingGamesJustificationFilms Go…

March 2, 2011 Add Comment

The (distinctly lacking) joy of banking

For an activity that relates to the thing we spend most of our waking lives accruing, banking delivers precious few moments of joy. Maybe the slick resolution of a problem when you expected a battle? Or the paying off of a 25 year mortgage? But what about those daily moments of joy that offer up a little smile. I saw Ben Huh, he of smile inducing website ICanHasCheezburger.com, speak at FOWA a few years back. Ben said their whole business model was built around 5 second moments of joy. Of course pictures of cats with humourous captions are not quite an apples to apples comparison with banking but how many banking propositions and services factor in any kind of joy let alone a whole 5 seconds worth?

Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy gave an exceptional talk at TED Global last year entitled sweating the small stuff. As well as having some useful suggestions for cash machines, Rory also gave examples of small details that brought momentary delight. My favourite being the lift at a hotel in Sweden which featured the usually designed buttons that at first glance you would think are for the individual floors but they are actually for your choice of lift music. Other examples included the cute little airplane shaped salt and pepper sellers in Virgin First Class that bear the stamp ‘Stolen from Virgin’ underneath, reflecting the fact that people so often liberate them. A knowing smile and a fuzzy warm glow must beset a person upon the first notice of these things? And while the line between joy and novelty may be a fine one, the organisations that never get near to this line maybe lacking the culture of little moments of joy internally let alone externally.

Another recent example is Little Big Details which showcases little pieces of online design that you can see a person has put real care and love into. From the small download progress indicators in Google Chrome to the delightful credit card input forms on GitHub.

These little signature pieces by individual designers or smart thinking groups show the love they have for their product. Would these wondrous little things make it past the early design stages of large corporate processes? Would the developer/designer be brave enough to even try? Or should Internet Banking be a functional utility rather than a thing of beauty? I think I share the opinion of Brendan Dawes on the latter…

The food industry increasingly features such moments of joy. Innocent drinks with their hidden bottle messages and I recently saw a great example from Sheffield’s very own makers of sugar loaded cupcakes of wonder, Fancie. The ‘eat by date’ on their boxes is very nice (as are their sugar loaded cupcakes of wonder).

And it is not just food companies. How about email newsletter publisher MailChimp giving a bit of motivational encouragement after delivering a campaign?

But can a heavily regulated industry get away with such frivolity? Is it ‘on brand’ for a bank? How about some humour on your mortgage statement? ‘Your Mortgage will be paid off sometime around 2035…If I were you I would overpay as much as possible so you can sod off round the world sooner rather than later’.

Maybe I am completely wrong (almost certainly if past indications are anything to go by) and all people actually want from banks are ultra slick almost invisible interfaces that just get out of their way (which would actually bring joy) and let them get on with doing something more joyous elsewhere. Or maybe I am right and people would like a bit of humanity, a flair for design or just 5 seconds of joy in their banking lives. If anyone has any great examples of little moments of joy from a bank I would love to see them.

February 24, 2011 7 Comments

BarcampBank London 4

A few weeks ago I finally made it to a BarCampBank. These informal gatherings of banking geeks are held annually, in London and usually on a Saturday. Thankfully this years was on a Monday the day before Finovate.

which meant I was able to attend. The event was held at Nesta (The home of innovation apparently). The day was hosted by Dave Birch from Consult Hyperion and was sponsored by the Cabinet Office (and Consult Hyperion and Bullion Vault) who were very interested in alternative currencies and community funding, which gave the topics an interesting spin as well as introduce some different folk to the BarCampBank world. The format of the BarCamp is unconference so at the start of the day people post the topics they would like to discuss on a wall. These are then grouped together and themes identified.

Five breakout areas were defined and a session was held in each area. I attended 3 sessions, which were…

The potential impacts of NFC. A look at what is coming in the world of Near Field Communication. With the launch of the Nexus S by Google NFC is finally available in our stores and Apple are strongly rumoured to include NFC in the next iPhone and iPad. Will this be the start of a sea change in payments with tech companies getting increasingly involved? Or does control still rest with the payment networks and banks? This was quite a heated debate with people from O2, The GSMA, PayPal and other interested financial companies. Talk of Apple dominated the conversation to begin with. The general consensus was that they would not make a dent as it will be too expensive for retailers to upgrade their payments infrastructure for seemingly little benefit. I am not sure I agree with this as the cachet of being able to pay with your iPhone will be a great incentive in itself let alone the loyalty factors that could be involved.

What next for P2P business models. A very interesting panel which was dominated by representatives from P2P lending companies Zopa and FriendsClear. Giles the CEO of Zopa explained the complexities in starting a P2P lender. The ability to operate as a sort of mutual was hamstrung by the fact that considerable funding was required to get started so these companies will need relationships with traditional banks for quite some time. I asked a question of whether Facebook was a realistic competitor to Zopa but this was dismissed as the regulation requirements would be too onerous for them to even get started (rumours are that Facebook considered buying P2P lender Prosper in the US). I think if Facebook Credits gets a decent foothold we will certainly see them try something. We moved on from money to other forms of currency that could be traded P2P. Peoples time and effort were one and energy was the other future alternatives mentioned.

Time banks, where people are paid in units of time were a popular topic on the day. The example often rolled out was if someone in London cooked a lovely meal for the elderly parent of someone from Sheffield. Then the person in Sheffield could cook a meal for someone there. P2P networks at their most fundamental level. The creation of energy was also seen as a future tradable element. As solar panels and turbines become increasingly prevalent then it may become possible to offload unused energy to the grid for others in your community to use.

The importance of Identity. Another favourite topic of mine. The discussion around identity was probably the most lively of the three I attended. Topics ranged from the inevitable Banks as digital identity holders to the complexities of anonymous or partial identity management. The graphic example given was a frequenter of a fetish club whowould need to be identified in some form to attend while keeping there real world identity secret. They might also need some way of linking that anonymous identity to real world medical records should something go wrong. Like I said it was a lively debate.

With the conference being held the day before Finovate it meant quite a few people had flown in from around the world. This gave me a unique chance to meet some of the banking geeks I follow on Twitter in real life for the first time. This presents a tricky challenge though as you have to recognise people based on their 48×48 pixel avatar photo. I managed to meet up with Frederic Baud and John-Christophe Cavelli of Parisian based P2P lender FriendsClear, Yann Ranchere a financial tech blogger based out of New York as well as meeting up with previous acquaintances such as Brett King who had flown in from Singapore. I chatted, too briefly, with Dan Mullineux who is the creator of Money Toolkit and is apparently ‘Filling in where UK banks are failing to do mobile banking properly’ which is nice of him. Another interesting person was Rachel Sinha who is doing some lovel sounding visualisation work for the Chartered Institute of Accountants and is working with the godlike genius that is David McCandless. She was also baffled by the fact I was meeting people in real life that I only knew through Twitter. I also met someone from the company I work for, Tom Cannon, for the first time even though we had spoke, emailed and tweeted in the past. In the pub after the event I saw someone passing round dodgy but cool looking bank notes. It was Susan Steed from the New Economics Foundation who is involved in the Brixton Pounds local currency project and she kindly let me have some of the notes…not sure when I will be in Brixton next though.

11 Brixton Pounds

All in all a very thought provoking day and I met some very interesting people, well for bankers at least.

February 21, 2011 5 Comments

Can anthropormorphism help two factor authentication?

You know those lovely little calculator like devices that some banks use to help make your Internet Banking logon secure, do you enjoy using them? Do they make you feel happy? Are they a comforting security blanket? A necessary evil in the increasingly hacky/phishy world? Or are they yet another barrier to the easy access of your financial data? Or even worse a right pain in the backside? Different things to different people I suspect. My feelings on these devices fall somewhere between necessary evil and pain in the backside.

‘Those lovely little calculator like devices’ are known as two factor authentication devices. They allow you to generate a one time password (OTP) to help verify with your bank that you are who you say you are and that you are not some chancer half way round the globe that has worked out your normal logon and password. I was wondering if you could make these devices more enjoyable/tolerable by making them seem a bit more human or at the very least painting a smiley face on them complete with some wobbly eyes?

An article in Wired by Russell M. Davies kicked all this ‘thinking’ off. It tells the story of Russell buying a Sony Rolly, which is a small barrel shaped motorised speaker that can spin and flap in time to music, disappointingly it is not a robotic East End Poodle. As Russell explored using the device he found that it ‘…demonstrated to me that it takes only the slightest bit of pet-like or anthropomorphic behaviour from an object and we’re highly inclined to form a deep emotional bond with it.’ so the more human the device seems the more we are inclined to form a relationship with it. Some form a relationship so strong that they declare robots are nothing but heartbreak.

Speakers are not really a technology that is without love from consumers already but what about the vacuum cleaner? What was the effect on the relationship people had with those devices following the introduction of smiley faced bowler hat wearing Henry. Ben Terrett recently tried to find out who designed the face of Henry and as he looked into this he discovered a great quote ‘[The face was]…put there because the lonely cleaning armies of the early morning and late night liked to use an object they could address as a friend.’ As well as having a new friend did this addition of a face make the task of vacuuming more enjoyable/tolerable?

Of course making what is essentially a single function calculator compare on the cuteness scale with a dancing robot or a jolly red hoover is going to be difficult but small keychain size devices have in the past won over the hearts of a great number of people. Who remembers the Tamagotchi?

‘Make robots adorable and semi-useful and we’ll invite them into our lives faster than a Trojan horse in a meerkat suit’ Russell Davies

Unfortunately two form factor authentication devices are neither robots or invited. In a more fun world they would be both. Can you imagine a cute little dancing and spinning palm sized security access robokey? It would make a satisfying metallic unlocking sound when you generate the password or maybe a kerching or a warning cry of ‘do not go in there‘ in a comedy ‘I have just done an awful smelling excretion’ kind of way depending on the balance of your accounts. This would of course be prohibitively expensive but can you really calculate the ROI for bringing a bit of joy into peoples lives?

Please let someone build one of these dream security devices in the not too distant future or perhaps better yet come up with an alternative solution that makes a separate piece of hardware to log on to my online banking obsolete. On second thoughts that is complete madness.

February 3, 2011 2 Comments

Socialising Expenditure

I have a theory that people would rather publicly discuss their intimate sexual liaisons than their finances. This is probably due to the fact their sexual antics are less embarrassing than their dirty financial secrets. For this reason I am very interested to see how socialised transaction services like Blippy and Swipely fare. These services give their users the privilege of publishing their expenditures on credit cards and at specific retailers such as iTunes and Amazon.

Now I personally think this is a great idea. As someone who is a huge fan of allowing data to be published, subscribed to and repurposed, the thought of a datafeed of my purchases is a fascinating one. But I also fail to see the point of these services existence, why do I need another social network just to publish what I have bought and talk about it? or am I missing the point? Are they just a layer that then posts the details out to my social networks of choice to share with my existing social graphs? Or do they add extra value? Either way there are issues. Firstly, I am very unlikely to to join a new social network just around buying stuff. Secondly, I would certainly want control over the types of things posted to my existing networks. Spamming my tweetstream with all my credit card purchases is unlikely to win me many fans (although I don’t have many now so it might not be an issue). Blippy does give you full manual control of what gets posted which is a big plus.

And my final, and key, issue with these services is that surely they can be replaced very easily by the retailers and the card companies? iTunes used Facebook connect in conjunction with its 12 days of Xmas Promotion and surely they will soon kiss and make up and join forces on Ping (which presents a real threat to these services). It does not take a great leap of imagination to see them publish my iTunes purchases to Facebook in the same way and cutting out the need for Blippy or Swipely. Amazon for example could also make the purchases I share on my network, affiliate links for me so I earn some money thus giving me greater incentives to share.

The issue of sharing data outwards is the same with the banks/cards providers, in theory it should be easy to set preferences to enable me to share my purchases from specific retailers with specific social networks or to just implement a simple share button so it can be done manually. But getting an API/feed of account transactions is something most banks do not offer at this moment in time (something I have mentioned previously…and will no doubt harp on about again and again).

The other problems these services have is peoples perception of sharing this kind of data. To those that say they will never share this data I say you may not but plenty will, also people already share this data today they just don’t do it via retailers, banks or services like Blippy. They tweet ‘Just bought…‘ or some variant of that sentiment. Also lots of people are using Blippy, sharing around $500,000 of purchases a day.

I think we will see lots more of this financial sharing in the future we already have purchases, we also have savings goals from SmartyPig. How long before we see Mortgage goals (I only have 10 years left to pay off). My stock portfolio just grew by 0.25%. My Kiva microloan just enabled someone to start a new life. Aden unlocked the ‘I just blew my overdraft’ badge.

I think these kinds of shared items are inevitable and they are just more pieces of the database of intentions, as detailed by John Batelle. The use case for all these shared items is still not fully understood and at the moment they are little more than ‘look at me’ or the equivalent of broadcast marketing. That being said they point to wider trends and I believe in the future that those that share the most will benefit the most. On the other hand we all know that those people who overshare and fill their Twitter feeds with more noise than signal from automated services are quickly unfollowed. Are we getting to the point where we need dual twitter feeds? One designed for automated outputs that can be picked up by other automated processes? This might work well for all those tweeting devices we will have when the internet of things takes off.

I am watching this space with great interest. I don’t think it will be long before the sharing of financial goals, activities and interests is commonplace. When that happens it is also inevitable that sexual and financial taboos will meet head on and we will see people share how much they spent at Coco de Mer, proudly on their Facebook pages and Tweet streams.

October 20, 2010 Add Comment

The problem with PFMs

I will state up front I am a massive fan of the online personal financial management (PFM) sites such as Mint and the now sadly defunct Wesabe. They have shown how money should be viewed and managed online and have provided a blue print as to how Internet banking should look. But these sites have a big problem. They are very difficult for the user to effectively operate because getting your banking data out of your bank and into these services is not that straight forward.

The PFMs all offer a manual upload option, which is currently the most readily available (from banks), safest yet most cumbersome way to interact with them as you have to remember each month/week/day to upload the new set of data. These sites also offer lots of clever ways to logon to your internet banking while you are not there. This involves giving over your logon details (a classic case of the password anti-pattern) and letting the application scrape your data and return it to the service. For some services that password details cannot easily be handed over the service can be taught how to log on so it can record scripts and then automate this process. This is not only very unsafe, not too dissimilar to handing over your cash card and PIN number to a stranger, it also probably puts you in breach of your accounts terms and conditions. If any losses occur because of a breach by the PFM you may be liable. This is not an ideal situation for all concerned.

These services also allow subscription to automatic feeds of the data e.g. XML formatted data. This is a much better way for these sites to operate but unfortunately banks that provide these feeds are few and far between, especially here in the UK. One of the few banks that had this functionality up until recently was Nationwide. They switched off this facility recently as it was designed primarily to service MS Money users and as Microsoft have ceased to make that product it was deemed an unnecessary (and costly?) function to keep running. A few loyal customers of his service who were using the feed for online PFMs like Wesabe rather than MS Money were none too happy and have started a little campaign to get it reinstated. There are users wanting these services now but are stuck with manual or risky solutions. If only we had standard Bank datafeeds or APIs to allow these automatic links to work. I for one would be willing to pay for that functionality.

So why don’t banks offer this functionality? My personal opinion is it is either the fear of security breaches, not on their radar, or if it is they don’t want to lose control. The security aspect is probably the most common reason. What I do hope it is not the last reason. I am sure every bank would love to know the spending and saving details of any of their customers that have accounts at rival organisations but they maybe unwilling to share their own data. Data is very valuable, especially such private data as a persons spending habits and bank product holding. But the world is changing and customers want more from their online banking which is why sites like Mint are successful. Would these services become too powerful if all the banks implemented a standard open data feed. Letting customers use 3rd party services while the banks updated their own online banking sites to match the functionality already on offer elsewhere. Would customers ever come back?

A recent survey by Fiserv showed that in the US, customers preferred the safety of PFM tools provided by their banks rather than handing over logon details to third parties. If safer ways of data sharing existed would this still be the case? Or would people still prefer to do their money management with their bank? I would certainly feel safer using a banks platform and I am pretty sure open up data feeds would not see a mass exodus by customers away from their banks online banking service.

How might this mythical data feed look? What if all the banks, card companies and PFMs agreed on a standard feed format (hopefully compatible with the existing ones such as OFX) and technologies to allow secure access to financial data without breaching the password anti-pattern. For example why not use the widely accepted and used open standard OAuth?

I can imagine how beneficial this would be to people but I can also see the benefits for the organisations themselves, the ones that allow their customers the most flexibility will earn their loyalty. The flexibility of having access to this data would also benefit internal developments. For customers It would allow them to be able to see a real picture of their entire wealth (or in my case lack of it) and be able to manage things better because they would have the complete picture, assuming all their financial products were lucky enough to have this data feed.

So how do we reach this dream land where all financial organisations have a universally agreed data format and method of sharing this with 3rd parties? Who will drive this change? Customers demanding it? Banks joining together to work in an open collaborative way to benefit them all? PFMs coming up with an elegant solution they all agree on and that partner banks can agree to? Will the sledgehammer of regulation be needed? Or will an innovative new player such as BankSimple change the game with their API, making everyone else want to follow? I really don’t know. What I do know is that I want this sooner rather than later so if anyone can make it happen please do.

October 6, 2010 Add Comment

What if (insert brandname here) ran a bank?

It is often mused ‘What if Google ran a bank?’ and this has been covered at length by journalist Jeff Jarvis in his book ‘What would Google do?‘ as well as by others such as Brett King. The concept of a Google bank got me thinking what if a whole host of our favourite brands ran banks? What would they look like? What would they bring to the market? Would I bank with them? Here are just a few that I have thought about.

The Big Mac Bank – McDonalds the biggest owner of potential bank branches in the world would be an interesting bank owner. They are renowned for selling the exact same delicious and nutritious products the world over. If you step into a Micky Ds in London you can get the same Big Mac that you would do if you stepped in to a Micky Ds in Rio De Janeiro. Could they bring the same approach to banking? Drive thru loans? a truly global experience that is the same the world over?

The Just Do It Bank – The worlds biggest sportswear manufacturer could bring something a bit different to the banking arena. With their recent branching out into the gaming arena via Nike+ they could certainly link financial fitness with real world fitness. Just imagine the stars they could get to appear in their banking adverts? The Brazil football team alone could create such awareness of the bank in their home nation that the established banks in the market would be terrified.

The Bank of Jobs – The one that most people mention on a day to day basis, what if Apple ran a bank? I guess that millions of people would love to have bank designed by the God of black turtleneck sweaters and shiny objects of desire, Steve Jobs. They enthuse ‘It would be great, just imagine how easy it would be to access? Imagine how stylish it would be? A banking genius bar would be amazing!’ What they don’t consider is how horribly locked down it would all be e.g. the bank can only be accessed via Apple products, they would overcharge for their products and their customers would be horribly smug (Can you tell I have issues with Apple?)

The Bookstore Bank – Amazon are probably the greatest online retailer in the world. They sell almost everything and have made scarcity a thing of the past. What would the long tail of banking look like? Millions of financial products to suit every financial whim? Huge numbers of customer reviews ranking and rating each product? Couple that with one of the most advanced CRM systems in the world, ‘58% of customers who looked at his mortgage bought this one, they also considered these’ and you have a very interesting model for selling banking products…but would that make them a bank?

Facebank – So what if the worlds biggest social network, with its 500 million users, decided to start a global bank. They have recently introduced a form of currency, Facebook Credits which gives them their own money. If they could build an online banking service as easy to use and as addictive as the game Farmville (which currently has 81 million players on Facebook and is now using Facebook credits to allow you to buy virtual goods) then they really could become the biggest bank in the world. I personally think this one is the most realistic of all and I am not the only one.

The Supermarket Bank – I have already covered this using the most dominant supermarket in the UK, Tesco, as an example in an earlier post that you can find here.

The RyanBank – Chris Skinner recently wrote about what if RyanAir created a bank. I think we can imagine what it would be like (Stag and Hen loan products/insurance spring to mind) but I will let you read Chris’ thoughts on how he thinks it would operate.

As social and open source technologies become increasingly prevalent in society it seems inevitable that some day soon a full banking suite of products could be created and given away for free meaning that anyone could run a bank. There maybe a few pesky regulations to get around but their are ways and means around those, virtual currencies anyone? So which brands would you like to see run banks? What unique selling points and services would they bring to the banking sector? What about the ones mentioned above how can you imagine them operating and would you bank with them?

The image used is from this post here

October 5, 2010 Add Comment

Tesco Bank – A Unique Opportunity

In 2010/2011the UK will see at least 3 new high street banks. Metro Bank has already opened, Virgin Bank and most interestingly of all Tesco Bank should be along soon. It is the Tesco bank that I am most looking forward to as I am fascinated by what they come to market with. They really are in a very unique position to offer something completely new in the banking sector. From an innovation point of view I crave new things especially ones that have the opportunity to move existing markets forward. They have a very powerful quad play in their armory. One..Tesco need no branches as they already all over the country. Two…they have one of the best loyalty schemes in the world (Tesco Clubcard), as well as being a great incentive to stay loyal to Tesco for groceries (and everything else they sell) it is also one of the great CRM data sources of our times. Three…They already have some advanced online services e.g. online grocery shopping and physical delivery. They have also embraced open APIs so hopefully this will lead to a wonderful new online banking experience, Four…They sell mobile devices and they sell THAT mobile device, which not only gives them a great sale incentive (Like a free iPhone with your bank account Sir?) it should also focus their mind on really delivering on the mobile front.

Thinking into the future a little bit (lets very optimistically say January 2013) lets imagine a little Tesco Customer scenario. Lets call this mythical Tesco customer Barbara. First thing in the morning Barbara peruses her Tesco Bank account details on her Tesco freebie iPhone (Free when Barbara swapped her account, credit cards and mortgage to Tesco bank). Barbara’s Tesco app has alerted her saying it is shopping day (based on when she usually does her shopping according to Clubcard) and that she is £75 inside her monthly shopping budget on this time last month. Babs (we know her well enough by this point to abbreviate things) takes a look through her overall shopping totals for the month (lovely aggregation feature that one) and drills down into the detail of that shopping to see an aggregated view of the products she has bought that month (from Tesco of course). As she looks through the lists of items she has bought she can also see how many clubcard points she has accrued from each item. A lovely highlighted number in the corner shows new offers are available. A quick press and Babs can access this weeks clubcard offers and 2 for 1s that her local store has on offer. It also highlights offers against her usual shopping purchases and how much she will save this week along with how many clubcard points she could make. Babs transfers into the shopping section (or another app?) and updates her weekly shopping list with a few extra items including some of this weeks special offers and some replacement items for those out of stock in store (the app told her that as it knows Babs local store). Babs marks the shopping list complete and the app pushes the shopping list over to her husband Geoff so he can collect the shopping on his way home from work (he works nearer and finishes earlier than Babs).

Geoff receives a push notification that the shopping list is ready. As Geoff reaches the store he receives notification of some extra offers on in store targeted especially to him (some fine ales on 3 for 2 and a cracking offer on some Camembert). Geoff scans the items in as he shops (the trolley has a lovely iPhone holder to make this easier) RFID tag details are picked up by the phone when Geoff holds the items next to the phone before they are placed in the trolley (the trolley is a series of reusable bags, that Geoff brought with him, held on hooks). He gets a little notification when the list has been completed (including his beer and cheese purchases). On his way Geoff sees a poster for a 32″ 3D Super HD TV for just £299 but the offer is out of stock at the moment so Geoff taps his phone against the poster and the item is added to his bill and will be delivered from Tesco Direct at a time slot of his convenience. He chooses 18:40 on Thursday.

Geoff heads to the checkout where he walks straight through tapping the Tesco iPhone on a scanner, Geoff had previously selected the Pay via Tesco option which means the shopping to be paid for via the online authorisation Tesco have built, this interfaces directly to the Tesco bank account via the internet (therefore skipping those pesky charge inducing card networks). Geoff waits patiently for a millisecond while the transaction is completed and his receipt is uploaded into his Tesco iPhone App (So he has a guarantee for his new Telly), all the purchase details are uploaded against his account online and his new clubcard points are also added to his loyalty offset mortgage (100 points equals £11 off the mortgage). While this takes place the checkout area scans his trolley to ensure the contents match the list passed by the phone. This transaction is complete and Geoff heads to the car to load up the already bagged shopping and head home to get the dinner on. As he leaves the car park his fuel warning light comes on and this triggers an event on his phone to check the location and prices of the nearest fuel station. Unsurprisingly Tesco is the cheapest because as a customer of theirs he gets 5p off a litre and 10 clubcard points per litre.

There you have one of my visions of the Tesco bank future. Exciting from a banking/retailing/innovation point of view yet also a bit worrying from the point of view of smaller retailers.

October 5, 2010 2 Comments