Comments for Tomorrow's Transactions

Comment on Recognise me, please by Mickey

Mickey — Thu, 18 Dec 2014 14:35:35 +0000

I have had almost exactly the same conversation with my bank. It makes you wonder when they realise that this is not going to work – I bet they blame the call centre and not their own processes.

Comment on Recognise me, please by Gary Munro

Gary Munro — Thu, 18 Dec 2014 12:15:19 +0000

Agree, it’s now impossible for my bank to contact me, phone conversations are fun:

me: Hello
bank: We’re your bank
me: are you?
bank: yes, can you answer these security questions?
me: no, prove you’re my bank first
bank: err, we can’t
me: goodbye.

Comment on The Cashless Top 10 by Dave Birch

Dave Birch — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 10:34:56 +0000

And still no Iceland.

Comment on The Cashless Top 10 by John van der Heyden

John van der Heyden — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 10:27:26 +0000

Although it is very nice to see Belgium winning at something, I have to admit our number one spot is only true in the context of that one study’s very specific way of scoring a country’s cashlessness
In particular, the study makes two strong choices :
– taking into account all types of payments (including non-retail payments, like utility invoices or paying your rent)
– calculating percentages based on transaction value rather than transaction volume
This second choice in particular, results in what you could argue are biases :
– More weight on non-retail payments (e.g. utility invoices)
–> if you’ve got a good tradition of Credit Transfer, Direct Debit, even some EBPP (Belgium has Zoomit) you win over countries where people send cheques by post
– More weight on high-ticket POS payments (less likely to be cash)
– More weight on high-value items (stricter stock and accounting make those less compatible with tax evasion)

MasterCard themselves seemed to have doubts and, in this year’s release of the same study, switched to volumes instead of value

Yes, this year’s release, that’s the other problem : the CNBC story is (quite sloppily) based on a September 2013 report while there’s been a new one, in September 2014, with roughly the same countries in the top 10, but in a completely different order (Belgium is 6th and UK 7th)
http://newsroom.mastercard.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/MasterCardAdvisors-CashlessSociety-July-20146.pdf

Comment on I don’t know you, but my phone knows your phone by Mark

Mark — Sun, 14 Dec 2014 09:47:05 +0000

The challenge will not so much with the identity of customers and desirable potential customers (for whom one can budget) but with the subject access requirements of the draft European Data Protection Regulation as this could require every organisation to respond to anyone (anywhere) about what personal information they have on them. That you don’t have an account is interesting for masquerading, so you need to be sure it’s the right person whether or not they are or were a customer. How this should be done may be left as a ‘detail’ for the Commission to sort out: a blank cheque in old-speak.

Comment on Banks and blockchains and clouds, oh my by Dave Birch

Dave Birch — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 11:17:32 +0000

Thanks Steven. I don’t really know what the best way to link identity and the blockchain is yet, only that it’s an area that promises radical change and, when combined with smart contracts, a genuinely new way of doing business.

Comment on Banks and blockchains and clouds, oh my by Dave Birch

Dave Birch — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 11:14:23 +0000

We have a winner! Send a mailing address to me dave dot birch at chyp dot com and the book will be on it’s way!

Comment on Banks and blockchains and clouds, oh my by steven sprague

steven sprague — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 09:16:00 +0000

Dave,

Great article!

http://blog.rivetz.com/2014/12/demonstration-wallet-sending-bitcoin.html

Shows a hardware secure element providing access to bitcoin on Galaxy S5

the attribute based model for identity can apply not only to the human attributes but also the capabilities of the device. For example do not download all of the NHS patient records onto a device that does not have disk encryption. reducing the need to call the information commissioner when you leave the device in a cab.

I think this will play a very interesting role in the smart contracts model of Blockchain technology as well.

I look forward to staying in touch.

Steven

Comment on Banks and blockchains and clouds, oh my by Angus Macdonald

Angus Macdonald — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 13:39:00 +0000

I enjoyed your discussions on the evolving forms of identity

Comment on Banks and blockchains and clouds, oh my by 6loss

6loss — Wed, 10 Dec 2014 22:03:11 +0000

Fascinating point toward the end about storing attributes on the blockchain – although I have difficulty bringing attributes into a continuous ledger model – as you say, there are times that identity ‘loan’ is convenient, and times when it’s not (for all parties involved). But is a ‘dead-end’ blockchain, which just stores certified attributes, still a chain? Or would it be fairer to assume the ‘proof of attribute’ generation is closer to mining than to private key control?

Perhaps there’s also something to be learned from Bitcoin’s fuzzy-trust model (number of confirmations) that could be applied to authentication trust… In effect, the proof of X that builds the chain becomes some kind of proof of reputation. Hmm, interesting, but it’s been far too long a day…

Would certainly love a copy of the book if it’s still going, although now I’m trying to work out a way to securely and privately transfer an address without proof of identity…