How many times do we hear that another site has been hacked, whether icloud, twitter, Facebook, Sony and now Starbucks. The media generally does an extremely poor job on describing these situations, and the average user just gets confused. This is a different scenario than Target Krebs sums the recent Starbucks situation up well here. Starbucks Hacked? No, But You Might Be Those customers had all chosen to tie their debit accounts to their Starbucks cards and mobile phones. Sullivan allowed in his story one logical explanation for the activity: These consumers had re-used their Starbucks account password at another … Continue reading Krebs has it right – you are the one who has been hacked

This from the EBAday 2015 meeting in Amsterdam, and hosted by the Euro Banking Association and Finextra. A sensible potential use case for blockchain being considered by RBS. EBAday Live 2015 15.35 Richardson says RBS has been exploring the use of blockchain technology with a view to seeing what it can offer to the bank, in terms of both reducing costs for international payments, and different ways of handling international payments. One potential use case identified is the use of virtual currency technology to help customers in foreign countries who need emergency payments. Continue reading Blockchain as an emergency payment method – idea from RBS

Flywheel fills a function missing with Uber. We all love Uber but it hasn’t overcome the basic flaw that taxi drivers are drawn to the immediate prize that they call fishing. When the subway is down, during rush hour, or old ‘customer demand’ habits arise taxi drivers flock to the best areas to fish for fares. As a customer of cabs, this means that I cannot get an Uber cab at precisely the times I need it most. But if I can flag a cab I would like to pay with similar to Uber with a couple of clicks. Flywheel … Continue reading Flywheel addresses a gap in Uber

Finally the voice of reason from a US retailer. Wal-Mart Treasury Exec: Chip & Signature is ‘Worthless’ Cook told CNNMoney that migrating to chip-and-signature is barely an improvement over magnetic-stripe cards, and said that Wal-Mart would have supported moving to a chip-and-PIN system. “The fact that we didn’t go to PIN is such a joke,” Cook said. Continue reading Wall-Mart Executive says Chip & Signature is worthless

Identity is an interesting subject. How can you prove you are you? This is something that was a compulsive topic in the late 90’s but died down after the assumed solution of PKI was understood as too hard to implement. Recently a colleague re-opened the topic. It was noted that Dave Birch has been on about identity recently too through his exploration of how Government mandated free provision of API services to be delivered by UK banks resulted in alternative business model thinking. Dave has some interesting ideas particularly in the area of “attribute verification” whereby Banks could provide positive … Continue reading Identity – how can you prove you are you?