When Bankers Were Good

Very good programme on BBC2 last night, Ian Hislop's When Bankers Were Good. And it had twice the audience of Jamie Oliver's latest show in the same slot on Channel Four. Always refreshing to see audiences choose something of substance over yet another bloody cookery show fronted by one of the most annoying men in the universe.

Bankers' reputations “have fallen below that of estate agents or even journalists" quipped Hislop, who argued that they had much to learn from their Victorian predecessors. The Private Eye head honcho took a look at such philanthropic Victorians as the Gurneys, a banking family of Quakers, Angela Burdett-Coutts, who was a sucker for a good cause, including the British Goat Society and prison reformer Elizabeth Fry (aka the lady on the back of the fiver).

Thoughtful, witty stuff and Hislop made for an amiable host. If you missed it, you can catch it here.

F-commerce on the rise

PayPal has unveiled Send Money, an application on Facebook which lets users send e-cards and money to friends. It's a move which seems like a no brainer, given that the site has more than 750 million users and a large percentage of them have active PayPal accounts.

It'll be interesting to see how many more businesses will take advantage of f-commerce. It certainly looks like an idea whose time has come. Twelve per cent of social media users have made a purchase from a Facebook store after seeing something on the site, according to the latest eCustomerServiceIndex (eCSI) results from eDigitalResearch and IMRG.

The results show an 8.8 per cent growth in f-commerce over four months as more and more retailers import their website functionality into the social networking site. The study also found that 25 per cent of online consumers now log onto Facebook more than once a day. Meanwhile, 97 per cent plan to log onto the internet this Christmas to browse and buy gifts. Twenty seven per cent will access the internet from their smartphone to browse and buy, whilst another nine per cent will use their tablet devices to do the same.

We have a winner!

I blogged a few weeks ago about the 2011 Best Dressed Banker Award.

This was organised by Savile Row tailors, Cad and the Dandy, set up by ex-bankers James Sleater and Ian Meiers. The shortlist included Credit Suisse Analyst, David Roditi; Francesco Chioccola of Credit Societe Generale; Sir Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England; and. Kweku Adoboli, Senior Trader at UBS. Yes, really. That guy.

But there can only be one winner and that is, and I quote the press release, "pretty, petite Michelle Flynn of Sapient’s client service."

Pretty, petite? Who writes this stuff? And what decade are they living in? Anyhoo, that's Michelle on the left, not dressed like your typical banker, it must be said. A controversial winner or will all bankers dress like this in the not too distant future? Message me if you can be bothered.

Payments Technology Conference review

In the process of writing a review of the FStech/Retail Systems Payments Technology Conference, which took place in London last week. It was a really good day, a full house and lots of excellent speakers and panellists. Thanks to the sponsors, all those who attended and took part and Paul Rodgers of Vendorcom who did a great job of chairing.

My review of the conference will appear in the November/December edition of FStech, but for the time being here are a few of the standout comments from the day:

Rob Brown, Group EPoS Systems: "What should retailers do to drive contactless adoption? Advertise the hell out of it."

Jeremy King, European Director, PCI SSC: "It is not just protecting card data. If you have an e-commerce site, it is about protecting all your data. That is what PCI DSS can bring you."

Alan Moss, Marketing Director, VeriFone NW Europe, Middle East and Africa: "Retailers have taken so long to roll-out contactless as there hasn't been a convincing value proposition."

Paul Rodgers, Chairman, Vendorcom: "PCI never was and never will be an IT problem. The whole business needs to be involved."

Jeremy King, European Director, PCI SSC: "When we talk about contactless, there are four key words, United States of America. It hasn't adopted EMV or chip and pin but it is likely to go contactless. That will be a big driver."

Mark McMurtrie, Marketing Director, S1: "Banks still have a major role to play in this brave new world of payments."

Carl-Olav Scheible, UK MD, PayPal: "The pace of change is so great even PayPal is struggling to keep up."

Paul Rodgers, Chairman, Vendorcom: "We're in this together and that's a message that doesn't always sit comfortably with the wider industry."

Alex Kwiatkowski, Research Manager, EMEA Banking, IDC Financial Insights: "NFC may be hip but it's massively over-hyped."

Simon Austin, Commercial Director, Bank Machine: "In 2010, there were only 1.7 million contactless transactions processed in the UK. Pathetic!"

Phil Edwards, Head of Business Development, O2 Money: "We're not looking to take on the banks. Our strength lies in mobile."

Further information on the conference here.

Payments Technology Conference

Quick reminder that it's our Payments Technology Conference on Thursday (held in association with sister title, Retail Systems).

It's taking place at The IoD Hub and entry is free to financial institutions and retailers. Great line up of speakers and panellists, including Best Buy Europe, PayPal, Citibank, HSBC, Barclaycard, Bank Machine, Lloyds Banking Group and Clinton Cards.

There are still a few places left so, if you would like to come along, click here.

Android on the up

Interesting to see that, during the period July - September, Samsung overtook Apple to become the world's biggest seller of smartphones.

This obviously doesn't account for the launch of the iPhone 4S, but it's still tempting to paint this not as a blip but rather as Android taking control of what has become an increasingly bloody battle. 

I say this in relation to the recently released Steve Jobs biography, which contains the revelation that the Apple boss was furious at what he saw as Google pilfering features from the Apple iOS software. Jobs reportedly vowed to do everything within his means to destroy Android after last year seeing features in HTC’s Android 2.1 phones.

All in a good cause

Quick plug for Bank Machine, which is inviting Britain’s charities to sign up for a scheme enabling charitable donations at ATMs.

Charities can register an interest before the end of November. The donations option on the LINK ATM network is planned to go live during April 2012. Bank Machine’s managing director, Ron Delnevo, says: "We fully support this superb initiative. We believe many millions of pounds can be raised for good causes and we want to give as many charities as possible the opportunity to apply to participate at Bank Machine ATMs. We will select from those charities that apply directly to us.”

"Times are hard, and all of us in the UK need to pull together to ensure that the least fortunate are not forgotten. Almost everyone in the UK uses ATMs, so what could be easier and more fulfilling than, when we are getting some cash out for ourselves, at the same time sending a donation to support charities which work with the most needy in our country and overseas,” he adds.

Further info here.