[Dave Birch] The fourth of the lunchtime round tables in the Innovation in Payment series will be held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Berlin on 23rd April 2009. All are welcome, but as space is limited please reserve a place with the CSFI before coming along. This fourth seminar looks at the roles of banks and non-banks in the European payments landscape of the near future. You can download the full invitation Download 04_Apr09_Roundtable.pdf (89.9K).
We tend to associate payments with banking, but the connection is as much custom and practice as inexorable business logic or law of nature. An article on Banks' Payment-Driven Revenues in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Economic Policy Review (July 1999) summarised the situation neatly, observing that economic theory on the operations of commercial banks "cannot, by itself, explain why they provide payment services on such a large scale". With new technology reducing barriers to entry as well as creating new payment markets, we may see a different payment landscape in the future. Can we imagine transit operators joining Visa? Can we imagine mobile operators handling low-value payments instead of notes and coins? Can we imagine some banks leaving retail payments? Or will banks innovate and develop new payment systems for a new economy? With changing economic, social and business pressures on the payment system, it's a good idea to challenge preconceptions and ask ourselves whether payments is a banking business?
Three experts will share some ideas about the future relationship between banks and non-banks in European payments:
- Will Judge is Head of the Future Ticketing Project at Transport for London and was previously E-Money Project Director there. With 25 million contactless Oyster cards issued, TfL know a thing or two about the mass market for small payments.
- Nav Bains is Senior Projects Director in the GSM Association's Pay-Buy-Mobile initiative and is at the centre of the global, complex ecosystem emerging around banks, mobile operators, schemes and suppliers.
- There will also be a guest expert from the German banking sector.
You might never get the opportunity to question them on a panel together again, so please do come along and help us to understand the future relationship between payments and banking by tapping into their collective experience, perspective and knowledge.
Perhaps the most important use of money - It saves time.
Author W. Somerset Maugham (1943).
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