CHYPlog

A jolly good Fellow

Visa Europe (Visa), the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation (CSFI) and Consult Hyperion (CHYP) are pleased to announce that David Birch (Dave), one of the founders of Consult Hyperion is to be appointed the Visa Research Fellow in Payments at the CSFI for 2009.

In this part-time role, Dave will co-ordinate a research programme looking at the process of innovation in payments. The goal will be to bring together the technology timeline, business drivers and social and cultural trends to construct a useful roadmap of the European payment market over the short, medium (5-10 year) and longer terms. This will be achieved using a combination of well-known road mapping techniques and innovation-based analysis specific to the financial sector. The reason for adopting this approach is that it is clear that there are different dynamics to the technology, business and cultural drivers around payments. These dynamics make it difficult to determine the new products and services in the payments space that will be successful in given timeframes. This research programme will attempt to understand enough about the innovation process in the financial sector to develop a road map that captures the cumulative evolution of technology, the drivers across the coming business cycle and the key European social and cultural trends. This road map will then be used to identify a number of paths, directed by open and shared learning about previous innovations in the payment sector, that will help European financial institutions, regulators and technology suppliers to guide their investments in new payments products and services more effectively.

Could you be a privacy test-bed?

The ‘Visualisation and Other Means of Expression’ project (VOME) is a £2m project co-funded by the Technology Strategy Board, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Economic and Social Research Council. Consult Hyperion is participating in a collaborative project with researchers from the Information Security Group (ISG) at Royal Holloway, University of London, consent and privacy specialists at Salford and Cranfield Universities and Sunderland City Council, to explore how people engage with concepts of information privacy and consent in on-line interactions. The research will be put to the test in real life scenarios; one of the project partners, Sunderland City Council, has commenced implementation of a regional, federated identity initiative for the north-east of England, enabling citizens to gain access to shared services provided by the public and private sector. The Council will work with the VOME team to produce a new set of tools – such as role-play games or narrative puzzles - to help youth support workers clarify how the information will be used and safeguarded in the hope of engaging more young people.

Voicing an opinion

Dave Birch of Consult Hyperion will be speaking at Voice Biometrics in London next week. He will be explaining how the technology fits into the broader picture of identity management for government and business, and using the experts there to test out some ideas about leveraging biometric technology to deliver both security and privacy in transactions.

Good luck Gloria!

Many of you know Gloria Benson, one of our Directors. Over the years, Gloria has been involved in a wide variety of community support and charity fund-raising activities. Well, here comes the most ambitious ever! Gloria is about to cycle through Vietnam to raise money for the Breast Unit Fund For Education and Research (BUFFER), a local charity run by her surgeon, that helps to purchase equipment for the early diagnosis of breast cancer. BUFFER is one of the charities that Consult Hyperion has supported through our not-for-profit Forums over the years and we will be supporting it again this year (and thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, we'll be giving more than ever before). If you'd like to support Gloria in this fantastic effort, you can donate via Giftshare.