Talk of Many Things – Page 17 – Personal Blog of Ketharaman Swaminathan

Six Step Plan For ONDC To Replicate The Success of UPI

17 May 2023

Open Network for Digital Commerce seeks to increase the penetration of digital commerce in India by enabling companies to plug into its open and interoperable ecommerce protocol and thereby complete…

8 Money-Making Schemes That Sound Too Good To Be True – But Are True

10 May 2023

According to the old adage, "If it's too good to be true, it's a scam". In times of rampant fraud, like we're seeing in the crypto world now, many people…

Calling BS On The Meme “Banks Privatize Profits And Socialize Losses”

1 May 2023

I first heard the meme "Banks privatize profits and socialize losses" soon after some banks were bailed out during the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-8 in USA. The narrative was,…

Go Figure: Contradictions – Part 2

26 April 2023

This blog post features ten more contradictions / ironies / disconnects aka #GoFigure. 1. There are tons of free credit cards with rewards, deferred payment, fraud protection, etc. Debit card…

How Do Banks Make Money From Credit Card Business?

19 April 2023

Banks have created the impression that they love credit cardholders who pay only the minimum balance every month and revolve their outstandings so that they can earn juicy interest off…

Go Figure: Contradictions – Part 1

13 April 2023

In this blog post, we'll feature ten contradictions / ironies / disconnects aka #GoFigure. 1. Trend driving Tech: Go from CAPEX to OPEX. Trend driving Solar: Go from OPEX to…

Economic Times Publishes My Piece On “PPI Via UPI” Payments

1 April 2023

Finance is full of hair splitting as I warned in Hair Splitting In Finance. Payments is no exception. In Retail Payments Primer, I highlighted that credit card, debit card, wallet,…

Aspirational Product Is Not Misselling

22 March 2023

Aspirational Feature is a 10X feature in a software that attracts a lot of users to switch products but is not used by most defectors after they make the switch.…

ISO 20022: Waiting For Godot Moment

15 March 2023

Limitation in field length of payment messages causes endless number of problems in electronic payments. Let me give a few examples: I was unable to fit the payee name MCS…

Utilities: New Source Of Subscription Trap

8 March 2023

Media, OTT, SaaS and other recurring-revenue businesses generate revenues from subscriptions funded by credit card- (or debit card-) based standing instructions that automatically charge the cardholder's account every month. As…