Upwardly mobile

Just going through my notes from last night's FStech roundtable (sponsored by Elavon) which covered contactless and mobile payments.

Thanks to Wil Cunningham of Lloyds Banking Group for chairing and to the attendees who contributed to what was an interesting, lively debate. I'll run an indepth review of the roundtable in the next issue of FStech, but for now here are some of the stand out comments:

When it comes to contactless, it's like someone has built a Ferrari but the roads are full of potholes.

There are real positives. Look at McDonald's - they rolled out contactless in a matter of weeks. They have a compelling contactless proposition.

The industry needs to look at how it deals with messaging at different levels. The idea that cash is dead is utter nonsense. The cards and payments industry does itself no favours by claiming otherwise. Cash will be with us for many years to come.

With the rise of Facebook, Google and Apple and NFC-enabled phones, are we approaching the stage where we say, why do we even need a bank account? We can make the switch from bank to cell phone provider.

This discussion brings up an interesting scenario. With the exception of the two ladies at the end of the table (NB: Sonia and Emma, FStech sales ladies), we are a bunch of boring old farts. We're talking about email but it is so last century. Young people are not even having this debate, they are on Facebook and so on and they are communicating and looking out for one another on a whole different level to us.