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Ketharaman Swaminathan

Founder and CEO
GTM360 Marketing Solutions
Member since
17 Apr 2009
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Ketharaman's comments

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Bye-bye Checking and Current Account

To add to @Finextra Member, there's one more hassle of having multiple accounts: Forgetting to declare a couple of them in your income tax return, only to be reminded by the taxman to cough up tax and penalty on the interest income accrued in them. Not a first world problem, probably, but can be a hassle in high interest economies like India.

By their very nature of having different withdrawal frequencies and lock in periods, money in different accounts is weighted differently for capital adequacy purposes. Therefore, even if banks' internal silos crumbled, I am not sure if they can offer @Finextra Member's dream account under the current regulatory framework. Besides, I'm sure bankers created different types of accounts only because people expressed different financial needs. I for one am perfectly comfortable about sweeping any surplus funds from my current / checking account into a separate savings account periodically. So might many others.

For several reasons - all genuine and compliant with its TOS - I have three different accounts with PayPal, so I don't know who are these nonbanks who are 'stepping in' to offer all-in-one-and-one-in-all type of accounts.

31 May 2012 16:46 Read comment

Bye-bye Checking and Current Account

In the brave new world where Apple, Facebook, Google, PayPal, Square and scores of other non-banks are apparently threatening to disintermediate banks, I'd have thought that 'bank account' itself is an outdated term and that 'Non Bank Account' is the product that better captures the zeitgeist. Just joking...

Everyone understands what 'checking account' means. So, IMHO, it is a waste of marketing dollars for banks to rebrand 'checking account' to 'bank account' or some such thing. Besides, notwithstanding what analysts and statistics say about the declining use of checks - BTW, I find this spelling far more phonetic than the contrived alternative - we see fairly contradictory trends on the ground:

  1. Even Internet-only accounts now offer check books e.g. ING Direct USA.
  2. Mobile RDC for offsite deposit of checks is perhaps the only 'killer app' in mobile banking in the US today.
  3. To set up a bank account for direct credit via EFT, the Indian regulator asks for a canceled check to prove account ownership. Paradoxical as this might sound, I trust the regulator to know what it is doing. Among other accomplishments, it has established an ePayment system called NEFT in India, which has been hailed as one of its kind by BIS in its recent report on global retail payments innovations. In any case, banks have no choice but to comply with the regulator's edict, paradoxical or not.

Just as analysts have been predicting the death of cash for over five decades, I expect their predictions about checks to last at least half as long. Until then, 'checking account' is quite fine.

30 May 2012 19:48 Read comment

Commbank can - a technology and UX driven campaign

14MB for such an app is indeed high. In India, most 3G plans charge around US$ 10 / mo. for 500MB data usage, so it's still conceivable to download this app via 3G. If 3G is much costlier in Australia, I agree that most users there would decide to download it only via WiFi. Which is a pity - by taking away the scope for 'instant gratification', CBA risks reduced CTA and lower conversion.

I've used Times intARact on Android. The app size is only 1.69MB. I did spot it on the Apple AppStore here, and it says app size is 3MB. In case the app is restricted to certain geographies (e.g. India), I think you won't be able find it from Australia.

As for usage of the app, Google Play shows # of installs in the public domain whereas AppStore doesn't. While both may supply many more usage metrics to the app owner, I'm not sure if CBA will share them in open. At least, far as I know, none of the advertisers using intARact have done so.

30 May 2012 09:14 Read comment

Commbank can - a technology and UX driven campaign

Thanks but the crux of my observation still remains. Downloadable mobile apps flaunt their ability to provide better UX than mobile web apps. So, making them downloadable - not just usable - over 3G is a cross that mobile developers must bear. This is even more true for an app intended to engage deeper with a highly fungible commodity like a newspaper ad. Most people wouldn't have carried the newspaper home, or, even if they did, wouldn't have remembered to go back to the CBA ad. BTW, although I hadn't mentioned it before, I'd downloaded the Times intARact app via 3G.

29 May 2012 14:03 Read comment

Commbank can - a technology and UX driven campaign

"The local papers have a downloadable iphone app with newspaper ads that interact with the phone (mind you, I didn't have wifi at my coffee shop so will have to do later)."

Talking about technology, just curious to know why CBA's mobile app won't work without WiFi. To me, a mobile app that doesn't work on 3G sounds like a contradiction in terms. India's leading newspaper The Times of India has a multi-OS mobile app called Times intARact which works fine on WiFi and 3G. In fact, I happen to have used it only on 3G to experience the augmented reality extension to many recent print ads. 

29 May 2012 13:41 Read comment

Free Mobile Apps Equal Drained Battery

It's ironic that the true power of a smarphone - anywhere, anytime on - is so badly undermined by problems in another kind of power - battery! Personally, I like targeted ads and LBS apps among other smartphone goodies. While all suggestions to preserve battery life are useful, I begin to wonder if following them wouldn't downgrade the smartphone to its poorer cousin - feature phone. 

29 May 2012 12:57 Read comment

Are banks truly supporting UK businesses?

As the subprime mortgage crisis exposed, bankers make more bonus when they lend more money.

If, this time around, they're reluctant to make more loans to small businesses, there must be something more than lethargy or complacency to explain their behavior viz.:

  1. Increased capital requirements to comply with Basel-III
  2. Heightened scrutiny of their Non Performing Assets by regulators (this has already started happening in India), and
  3. Starting troubles faced by non-banking competitors like Wonga under regulatory oversight, well before they've become 'too big to fail'. 

29 May 2012 12:40 Read comment

Ugandan telco says employees stole $3.5m in mobile money fraud

@Michael J: 

Thank you for the clarification. It's clear why unclaimed payments would call for suspense account, regardless of whether they are sent to registered or unregistered mobile #s. But, unclaimed payments are not "incorrect transactions", nor do they involve customers who have "entered the wrong details", which is the context of this article and my comment. I still remain clueless about the need for suspense account in this context. 

29 May 2012 12:26 Read comment

Ugandan telco says employees stole $3.5m in mobile money fraud

If sender / receiver have to enter complex details like bank account # and sort code to initiate a payment, I can understand how mistakes could creep in and why a suspense account is needed. However, going by the popular stereotype, the typical user of MTN's mobile money transfer service is likely to be unbanked and would simply have to enter the beneficiary's mobile phone # to transfer funds. In that case, I can't understand how there could be mistakes in payments and why a suspense account is required in the first place. 

29 May 2012 11:55 Read comment

The Hidden Costs of Banking

Just because petrol from BP, Shell, Aral and other petroleum companies is more or less the same as one another, I won't expect them to be given away for free. Likewise, basic banking service - boring or not - doesn't have to be free. Differentiated features command premium but are not required to justify a basic fee. That banks have kept them free reflects a legacy problem: Having started off by giving away toasters and other gifts for opening checking accounts, it's too much of a stretch for them to think of levying fees for such basic banking products. That explains why most of them give away traditional, but costlier, 'products' like branch, cheques and cash for free but are able to charge fees for newer, but cheaper, 'products' like EFT, debit and credit cards. On the other hand, banks have a solution about which they smartly maintain a low profile: It's called Net Interest Margin.

25 May 2012 17:32 Read comment

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Ketharaman writes about

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