Since the 2008 U.S. financial crisis, the financial services industry has subtly adopted new terminology for the consumers at the center of the storm. These consumers used to be “subprime”; now they are “underbanked” or “underserved”. But in the course of this terminology shift, we seem to have forgotten the needs of these consumers. We
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Recent interactions between me and two financial services institutions resulted in two distinctly different customer service experiences. The first was a call to request a new credit card to be sent to me due to an upcoming expiration date and a vacation planned during which the card was going to be my main form of
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It seems those consumers who use the Internet favor convenience over fear. In a recent study commissioned by Jumio, 83 percent of respondents are worried about identity theft, while still continuing to conduct their financial business online. In fact of the 26 percent of respondents who have been victimized by online or mobile fraud, half
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Everyone in the world will have access to the Internet by 2020. At least that’s what Google’s Eric Schmidt thinks. “By the end of the decade” he says, “everyone on Earth will be connected.” The flurry of comments, tweets and columnist reactions to this declaration ranged from complete awe to complete anger. True, countries like
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Early last year I posted a blog about how M-PESA, a SMS mobile payment solution was single handedly causing inflation in Kenya. Well, they continue to amaze, this time in a good way. A recent article on Kenyan news site The Star reports M-PESA’s fraud losses are well below one percent. According to mobile supplier
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The need for control seems to be driving news recently: Insights has explored the search for safety in the Bitcoin phenomenon and in eCommerce concerns. With U.S. consumer sentiment numbers at a nine-month low last month, it is no surprise that consumers are looking to regain a sense of power over both their spending strategies and
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The cashless society may be closer than we thought. Sweden’s biggest banks—SEB AB , Swedbank AB and Nordea Bank AB —are stopping manual cash-handling services in 65 to 75 percent of their branches. More and more Swedes are using the web, phones and credit cards to make payments and the banks see less of a
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