[Dave Birch] The seventh of the lunchtime round tables in the Innovation in Payment series will be held at Waterman's Hall, 16-18 St. Mary at Hill, London EC3R 8EF from 12.30pm-2.15pm on 14th January 2009. Colin Whittaker from the UK Cards Assocation, Nick Ogden from VoiceCommerce and Professor Angela Sasse will be on the panel and we will be discussing future security for retail payments. We want to try and understand how security will work and how we can make it cost-effective as well as efficient. If you want to join us you can download the full invitation here: Download (107K).
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[Dave Birch] People do talk about having a "war on cash" from time and, believe me, I'm very much in favour of this. But it doesn't necessarily mean a future of continuous skirmishes between cards and cash, battles over "territory". Another future for notes and coins might see them becoming unfashionable or socially-unacceptable, sort of the way that drunk driving did. Maybe it would be OK to pay with cash, but when you produced a crumpled tenner in Waitrose you'd have to endure the suspicious stares of the staff and customers behind you in the checkout queue. They'd naturally assume that you are a tax evader or drug dealer, perhaps a pimp or a corrupt local government official.
At a time when governments desperately need tax revenues, a shift in public attitudes away from suspicious cash towards law-abiding cards could be a more effective driver for growth in the electronic payments marketplace than issuer incentives or more pervasive acquiring networks.
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