13 Results from 2017
Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions
Personal Finance Managers and Mobile Money Management Apps (herewith “PFM”) have been around for over a decade. So far, PFM has focused on budgeting by offering tips to save money on everyday expenses such as the proverbial $5 coffee. For reasons highlighted in Innovative Fintechs Don’t Need No Open Banking Regulation, PFM's value proposition has...
04 December 2017 /retail
As is widely known, there was a severe cash crunch in India on the back of the demonetization of high value currency notes a year ago. To ease the pain, the government of India made a big push to promote digital payments. Trending under #CashlessIndia, the drive multiplied visibility of preexisting digital payments and led to the launch of several...
08 November 2017 /payments /retail
Every now and then I come across a techie complaining that their sales is overselling, thus making their job of creating a satisfied customer harder. For example, take this OP on Quora, who asks: Is it common to oversell in B2B? My boss has a tendency to oversell our company services, but the tech team can't keep up. I’m new to the B2B setting. I ...
23 October 2017 /startups
Consumer advocates ranted about overdraft protection fees in 2008, saying the service was forced down upon consumers. While the uninitiated can Google "overdraft protection" for a prosaic definition of the term, Stanley Bing offers the following tongue-in-cheek description for one of the most lucrative services offered by US banks: “No m...
22 September 2017 /regulation /retail
If you think bots will never replace human agents, you’re amongst the lucky few who has been served by intelligent human agents. I admit that I’ve also been among the lucky few at times. But more often than not, I come across fairly dumb human agents. And, lately, I've started experiencing fairly intelligent chatbots. Let me give you three recent ...
14 August 2017 /ai /retail
I recently read the following tweet: "After Banks figure this out and do something with eKYC, they will realize that people are not ready to pay MDR, want privacy" (https://twitter.com/logic/status/833642760456376320) I replied back pointing out that: "But Merchants pay MDR, not Consumers!" (https://twitter.com/s_ketharaman/stat...
18 July 2017 /payments
I noticed a huge crowd during a recent visit to my bank branch. I happened to spot the bank’s Head of Relationship Banking - let me call her Sonia - in the branch. I asked her how come their branch was so full when finsurgents have been predicting the death of branches for so long. Sonia told me that, let alone die, their branches are growing. Desp...
08 June 2017 /retail /startups
A few months ago, I'd visited the South Indian temple town of Tirupati with my family. On the way, whenever the train stopped at a station, the engine was switched off. But the air-conditioning still worked because it was powered by huge battery packs installed in the AC coach. Coincidentally, the manufacturer of these battery packs is located clo...
16 May 2017
Contrary to popular belief, ecommerce began in India in the mid-1990s, which was way before Flipkart came into existence in circa 2007. I remember placing orders from a dial-up modem on Fabmall, Rediff and a couple of other Indian ecommerce pioneers in the late 1990s. I used to pay online by credit card, which I remember was the only mode of payme...
21 April 2017 /payments
I had to pay college fees of INR 300,000 (~US$ 4615). The college supported an array of digital and paper-based payment options viz. Digital: Log in to college website, use college’s ePayment Gateway and pay by Credit Card. Paper: Demand Draft. I evaluated the pros and cons of both options. DIGITAL PAYMENT Pros: Credit card reward points: 3000 (@ ...
28 March 2017 /payments /regulation
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