This blog exists because of the Visa Europe Research Fellowship in Payments at the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation in London. The Fellow for 2009 is David Birch. David is a Director of Consult Hyperion and Chair of the Digital Money Forum. He also drives the Digital Money Blog.
At the heart of the Fellowship is 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.
The partners in the Fellowship Programme are Visa Europe, the CSFI and Consult Hyperion.
Visa Europe is the European payment system owned and governed by its 4,600 member banks. Every day, millions of European consumers and retailers use Visa to make and recieve payments conveniently, quickly and securely.
The CSFI is an independent think tank based in London. It was formed in 1993 to stimulate research into the future of the financial services industry, and to provide a neutral meeting ground for financial practitioners to share ideas and explore the road ahead. It is sponsored and supported by many of the world’s leading banks, professional firms and technology companies, as well as official organisations such as the Bank of England, the UK Treasury, the Financial Services Authority and the Department of Trade & Industry.
Consult Hyperion is an IT consultancy that has spent two decades advising leading organisations around the world. They help their customers to reap real benefits by taking advantage of change in information and communications technologies to deliver secure electronic transactions: transactions ranging from retail payments to passport control.
This blog provides a window into the fellowship programme and presents some of the input, analysis, results and findings.
Comments