Prepaid and social payments make a genuine win-win
[Dave Birch] I’ve been reading an excellent new publication from the think tank Demos. It’s called “The Power of Prepaid” by Claudia Wood and Jo Salter. In essence their well-researched and interesting...
View ArticleEven if we could police some kinds of spending, we shouldn’t
[Dave Birch] A couple of the projects that we are involved in at the moment are at the intersection of financial and social inclusion, which is a topic that interests me greatly. One of the aspects of...
View ArticleYou can take a gift horse to water, but you can’t make it fill out an HMRC...
[Dave Birch] Consult Hyperion has been providing some pro-bono consultancy support to Comic Relief. For those of you who do not live in the UK, let me just say that comic relief is one of the most...
View ArticleGDP will grow in a electronic payment economy
If all payments in the economy were electronic, this would mean a significant boost in GDP. A fascinating roundtable at my favourite financial services think-tank, the Centre for the Study of...
View ArticleYes, we should make voting social, mobile and local
Well, technology can make it easier to vote. But if there’s an app for that, we should still make people vote in public. In many developed economies, and the UK is typical in this respect, there is...
View ArticleIdentity in Financial Inclusion
Some fascinating debates around identity in my Twitterverse last week, considering the issue of the extent to which digital identity of one form or another can contribute to financial inclusion (and,...
View ArticleSecure-enough transit mobile ticketing
This year, I’ve been mostly working on ITSO ticketing in NFC mobiles devices with HCE and without secure elements. ITSO is the e-ticketing specification supported by the Department for Transport in...
View ArticleManaging the join
Since 2008 we have been working with Transport for London to allow contactless payment cards (CPCs) to be accepted wherever Oyster cards are accepted. This was first achieved in December 2012 on buses...
View ArticleTechnology roadmapping
In 2005 when we performed an update to our biometrics and identification technology roadmap for the UK police, body odour was a ‘technology’ that was looking interesting, but not mature enough. The...
View ArticleTransport for the North
Cash still accounts for 48% of transactions in the UK, according to Moneybox on BBC R4 just now. As part of this programme, Shashi Verma from Transport for London was being interviewed about the...
View ArticleOpen-loop payment in transit
In my previous blog, I talked about the trends in smart ticketing systems leading to account-centric and open-loop payments which I want to consider in more detail in this blog. ‘Open-loop’ Payments...
View ArticleBeacons in Transit
You’ve probable heard about Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Beacons being used to help the visually impared navigate on their own around public transport systems. This has been trialled in Bucharest on...
View Article‘Secure enough’ mobile ticketing
We’ve been working with ITSO on how to implement ‘ITSO with HCE’ since January 2015. In January 2016 we presented at Transport Ticketing in London about the work that we had done to date and this was...
View ArticleAccount-based ticketing workshops
We’ve been having a lot of fun in recent months leading workshops for transport operators about account-based ticketing. Sharing our recent experience with clients such as the UK’s Transport for London...
View ArticleWould you use the NHSX app?
I listened with interest to yesterday’s parliamentary committee on the proposed NHSX contact tracing app, which is being trialled on the Isle of Wight from today. You can see the recording here. Much...
View Article
More Pages to Explore .....