Recent issues with Facebook, Equifax, GDPR compliance, … have brought us to a tipping point in data. The basic structure of how data is: permissioned, shared, used, accumulated, analyzed, sold, regulated, … must change. Google and FB operate in a Big Data 1.0 architecture powered by the “virtuous cycle”. Edward Snowden showed us how the NSA also acts in this centralized model as a data vacuum (not so virtuously). Literature and entertainment have created broad awareness of the dangers of centralization and loss of privacy: 1984, the Borg, The Circle, Black Mirror, … etc.
Tokens and the Trojan Horse
I can’t believe I’ve been writing about this stuff for almost 10 yrs. If any of you have suffered through my 20 blogs (on tokens) I certainly don’t want to rehash anything.. just bring everyone up to speed on what I see as major issues on the horizon for V/MA, Issuers and Merchants.
Headline: Visa and Mastercard have made it easy for millions of businesses and billions of consumers to work together consistently. V/MA are a thing of beauty, creating incentives for multiple parties to invest in payments (and grow network).
Banks as a Data Business – Example Amex Advance/Acxiom
Traditionally the core of bank margin is in risk management. The core of risk management is data.. thus Banks have been the among the best data businesses (as IBM knows). Banks “learn” about their customers through bank interaction: payroll, card transactions, lending. This has helped banks make better risk decisions (both credit and fraud/identity). Within the bank data cycle the traditional use of data is for an internal benefit: risk and cross sale of the bank’s products and services (not that of consumers or merchants). However the “virtuous cycle of banking data” is very different from that enjoyed by Amazon and Google, both in the scale and type of data and consumer facing use.
PayPal surpasses Amex in Market Cap
What to expect from Money 2020?
Money2020 is in 3 weeks. This is the first year that Anil and Jonathan are no longer running the show since selling the conference (see Recode). While I’m anxious to see all of my friends, I’m also anxious to see what the new format will bring. Continue reading
Equifax, Facebook and Dangers of Centralization [of Data]
Equifax. It’s hard to sit on sit my hands and not write on this one. My perspective is shaped through running 2 of the largest online banks in the world, developing state of the art fraud prevention systems with the top 20 banks, working with Google and today creating Commerce Signals.
Enron has new competition for the company name that denotes loss and fraud. Equifax may be the single largest breach of consumer information in history…. It is everything from social to DOBs, DL #s, …. How did Equifax get our data?
Rewiring – Part 2: Walmart+Goog, Amazon+Whole Foods, …
China Payments – Field Trip with Russ
Guest post today from my General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer Russell Schrader. For those of you who don’t know Russ, he spent 18 yrs with Visa as their first Chief Privacy Officer.Russ just got back from almost 3 weeks in Asia
Amazon 2% + PayPal Discover
Two HUGE payment events this week
- Amazon 2% Cash Back (see Forbes Article)
- Paypal/Discover/Google
Amazon 2%
Per Bloomberg, consumers that don’t want to go for the 5% back Amazon store card (SYF) can now link their DDA and earn 2% back. This may be the biggest payment innovation of the year!
Apple Pay Cash – Gets an A+
Apple announced Apple Pay Cash yesterday at their WWDC (see recode article). Summary.. Apple gets an A+! I love the simplicity and the intuitive nature of how this works in a messaging metaphor that customers are familiar with (ie not introducing another app).