Celent has published a new report titled 'Disruption in the Payments World' saying that 'the current euphoric era for many issuers will be disrupted and quite possibly eliminated over the next three years.' Why? Celent's reasons include a forecast that interchange rates will begin to decline, that a large payments company will launch an alternative network to MasterCard and Visa, and that credit card issuers will need to diversify their payments mix by adding decoupled debit payment options.   » Continue Reading

In an article titled 'Innovation: The Growth Accelerator' in the latest issue of BAI Banking Strategies, McKinsey's Zubin Taraporevala and Marla M. Capozzi explore innovation in retail banking - saying that the banking industry is "ripe for innovation" and noting that "the vast majority of industry breakthroughs have come from attackers, not incumbents." They share results from a survey of 300 financial services executives that identified three major challenges inhibiting innovation - in particular, "limited use of customer insights and external idea networks" - along with six characteristics and capabilities of high-performing innovators.

This morning's panel titled 'Omelettes and Eggs: Innovation' at the Digital Money Forum explored the extremes of the issues of innovation in payments.

Perhaps the most basic question asked from the audience was 'why does innovation matter?' "Because it does" wasn't exactly the collective answer from the panel - but the question got to the point that it's not often that technology itself drives innovation. (Opening new markets is, to me, perhaps the best answer).

A venture investor asked the panel where theyd' put their own money to work. Among the answers from the panel: prepaid and mobile, opportunities that might emerge from new real-time 'instant' payments (e.g. FPS in the UK), innovations that truly address user (as opposed to merchant) needs and can demostrate user adoption, and a prepaid solution that truly addresses the needs of minors.

James Gardner, Head of Innovation and Research at a major UK bank, writes a great blog called BankerWatch. In one of his recent posts titled "A New Kind of Event Please," he laments the events that vendors try to stage to interest bankers in "hot issues" and, more likely, the vendors latest products.

Instead of those kinds of events, Gardner says he's looking for more interesting and thought provoking stuff such as: "I'd like an event that would tell me how to run a bank in the cloud."

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, spoke at Paul Graham's Startup School 2008 conference at Stanford over the weekend. Bezos spent his talk focused on "the cloud" - what Amazon's doing with web services (AWS). All you have to do is to look at the first slide in his talk to see how "the cloud" is becoming an important business.

FTVentures has announced the closing of its third and largest fund to date, FTV III, at $512 million. According to the firm, 'FTVentures will continue its strategy of investing in software and business services companies that derive value from the firm’s unmatched Global Partner Network, which includes the world’s leading financial institutions. Founded in 1998, FTVentures has over $1 billion in committed capital and has offices in San Francisco and New York.'   » Continue Reading

Last Thursday, in a post titled 'Innovation in Payments - A Survey of Experts', I mentioned a survey of global payments 'experts' conducted by our good friend John Chaplin on questions about the innovation in payments. If you'd like a copy of John's survey findings, please email me and I'll get a copy out to you.

During March, a good friend of mine, John Chaplin, conducted a survey of global payments 'experts' (myself included) on the question of innovation in payments. Chris Skinner, another of the participating experts, does a great job outlining the findings from John's survey in this blog post. If you'd like a copy of the survey findings, email me or Chris and we'll be happy to send along a copy.