[Dave Birch] I’ve been wondering why the IRIS biometric scheme is so bad. I’ve now given up on it completely: the last couple of times I’ve tried to used — when it’s actually been working — it hasn’t let me in. I don’t know why it’s stop recognising me, although I have a theory. What if it is something to do with the number of people enrolled? I was an early adopter of the scheme, and it’s always been pretty terrible. I’ve complained about it before bit always come back and given it another try. Well, no more. Whether the biometric, the system or the government procurement procedure failed, I’m not sure. But it’s not a very good advertisement for large-scale biometrics, just as the procurement for the national identity card in the U.K. is about to begin.

Technorati Tags: biometrics, government, transport

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These are the personal opinions of Consult Hyperion and its guests and should not be misunderstood as representing the opinion of its clients or suppliers. To discuss how any of the technologies discussed in this post can benefit your business, please contact Consult Hyperion.

[Dave Birch] Here’s another milestone that will probably pass unnoticed. The U.S. Federal Reserve will stop processing paper cheques in 2010. From then on, they will only handle “Check 21″ (ie, captured images and details) and I’m sure that the numbers of those will continue to fall. For some people, that’s a problem. If, for example, you make equipment to print and process cheques as does Panini North America in Dayton, Ohio. Their president, Douglas Roberts, says that

Checks will take us into 2010, 2011, but we need to be selling something in 2009 beyond checks… Checks will be a maintenance-only industry.

Technorati Tags: payments

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These are the personal opinions of Consult Hyperion and its guests and should not be misunderstood as representing the opinion of its clients or suppliers. To discuss how any of the technologies discussed in this post can benefit your business, please contact Consult Hyperion.

[Dave Birch] Now, I’m more than happy to admit that I don’t really understand patents. So there’s a shout going out from this blog for someone who does to provide comment on a story that a couple of journalists enquired about recently. The U.S. Patent Office — yes, the people who allowed someone to patent Archimedes theory (warning: link not suitable for family audiences) — have granted Google a patent on payment by text message. What strikes a mere normal businessperson such as myself as odd is not only that payment-by-text-message systems already exist and are widely used by people all around the world, but that they were in commercial operation for years before the patent was filed in February 2006. How does this work? How can you be granted a patent on something that already exists?

Technorati Tags: mobile, payments

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These are the personal opinions of Consult Hyperion and its guests and should not be misunderstood as representing the opinion of its clients or suppliers. To discuss how any of the technologies discussed in this post can benefit your business, please contact Consult Hyperion.

[Dave Birch] I’ve been running a masterclass at NFC World in Singapore, where the enthusiasm for all things NFC (including retail payments) was high. The two largest local mobile operators operators announced that they will pair up with the country’s two electronic-purse schemes to launch — as The Straits Times was quick to point out — incompatible trials of NFC. While the plans for the integration of national schemes in Singapore are in place and the migration to the Common Electronic Purse Specification for Singapore (CEPAS, which we’ve discussed before) is expected in 2010, as of today if you get a NETS phone it won’t worked on the buses and the EZ Link phone won’t work in road tolling. I mention this only as a reminder than technical interoperability and business interoperability are entirely different things, a recurring meme this week. More than one speaker said that getting banks and operators to work together continues to prove difficult, while one speaker said that their scheme had been a success precisely because it didn’t involve either banks or operators!

Technorati Tags: mobile, nfc, payments

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These are the personal opinions of Consult Hyperion and its guests and should not be misunderstood as representing the opinion of its clients or suppliers. To discuss how any of the technologies discussed in this post can benefit your business, please contact Consult Hyperion.

[Dave Birch] Yesterday morning I heard the first story on the BBC concerning contactless cards in the U.K. because MasterCard officially launched its contactless ‘tap and go’ payments system, PayPass in London. The BBC coverage wasn’t bad — I particularly liked Forum friend (and head of Strategy at MasterCard) Oliver Steeley’s firm comment:

You can’t stand in the way of progress.

but the radio report I heard spent a lot of the coverage on the security issue. Now, I’m not aware of any figures from either the U.S. or Asia-Pacific that show fraud on ‘tap and go’ payment schemes to be any more or any less than on other schemes (if anyone has such figures, please do share them) but that’s not the point: the point is the focus on what could go wrong — despite the explicit statement by MasterCard that customers will not be liable — rather than an exploration of new opportunities.

Technorati Tags: contactless, security

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These are the personal opinions of Consult Hyperion and its guests and should not be misunderstood as representing the opinion of its clients or suppliers. To discuss how any of the technologies discussed in this post can benefit your business, please contact Consult Hyperion.