Latest opinions that Benjamin Thorpe has shared on Finextra

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Benjamin Thorpe

Director

Glory

Member since

26 Nov 2013

Location

Singapore

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Benjamin's opinions

The cost of cash - for business, the environment and society.

Nothing in life is free – certainly not money. You can argue that all forms of payment have a cost associated with them in one way or another but unlike many of the new payment propositions out there, you still know where you stand with cash. The ever-increasing array of payment technologies on offer can easily lead to confusion for both the consum...

16 February 2016 /payments

ICCOS Asia and Newton’s 3rd Law of Thermodynamics

Presenting recently at the ICCOS Asia conference in Malaysia, I was asked to talk about the changes that retail cash automation is having on other stakeholders in the cash cycle: the banks, the ATM deployers, the security industry and also the central banks. In some parts of the world retail cash automation is very much in its infancy or indeed no...

17 November 2015 /payments /retail

Optimising cash for retailers with smart safes

Many retailers face the same challenges when it comes to managing cash. Expensive staff time is spent processing cash and correcting errors, only for the cash to be stored on-site before it can be deposited in a bank account, hindering the opportunity for it to be used elsewhere. Not only are these processes costly and inefficient – cash left on t...

05 November 2015 /payments /retail

In banking, as in rugby, there’s no room for human error

Congratulations to New Zealand on their Rugby World Cup win at the weekend. The Rugby World Cup has provided numerous iconic images but the vision of South African referee Craig Joubert sprinting from the field at the conclusion of the controversial Scotland Australia match will live long in the memory. Slow motion footage shows that the referee w...

30 October 2015 /payments /retail

Why Monitor an Attended Device?

Everywhere you look these days someone, somewhere, is monitoring something; CCTV on the streets, speed cameras on roads, entry and exit cameras in car parks, even your location via your Smartphone Apps, the list is endless. Not surprisingly that list includes the ATM you walk up to when you need cash; how else will someone know that it needs more ...

28 October 2015 /payments /retail

A cash wager - what 17th century French philosophy can tell us about cash today

If I remember one thing from university it is Pascal’s Wager. Blaise Pascal was a seventeenth century French philosopher, mathematician & writer. One of Pascal’s most famous works was the Pensées (Thoughts), which was published posthumously in 1670. His best known “thought” is often called Pascal’s wager and it goes like this: You start by

28 October 2015 /retail