Talk of Many Things – Page 50 – Personal Blog of Ketharaman Swaminathan

How Can Fincumbents Grow When Banks Are Shedding Customers?

19 September 2014

In their diatribes about the underbanked, unbanked and financial inclusion, many suppliers of financial services technologies to banks (aka "fincumbents") and members of the digerati threaten banks with the risk…

Apple Pay Puts Banks Squarely At The Center Of Mobile Payments

12 September 2014

Like many, I’ve long held that nothing is broken with plastic cards for instore payments and made the case for mobile wallets to stick to gift, loyalty, ID and other…

Walking The Tightrope Between Driving Repeat Purchase And Rewarding Loyalty

5 September 2014

I recently received an offer for INR 100 discount on my next trip on Meru Cabs, India’s leading cab dispatch company. To redeem this offer, I’d need to enter a…

Mast Kalandar Shows How Not To Run A Loyalty Program

29 August 2014

Mast Kalandar is a North Indian quick service restaurant chain that has branches in Bangalore, Pune and a few other Indian cities. I happened to visit one of its outlets…

Cash in Hand Is Worth More Than Card In Bush

22 August 2014

There’s no shortage of studies about the hidden costs of cash to merchants and others. Take this recent HBR report for example. On the face of it, they all make a…

Calling BS On Banking The Unbanked

15 August 2014

"Financial inclusion", "banking the unbanked", blah blah blah. Call them what you want. But they all mean the following: Financial Inclusion / Banking the Unbanked - What They Mean People…

Will Publishers Survive The Mobile Onslaught?

8 August 2014

Looks like mobile has started impoverishing publishers, too, since I wrote Will Mobile Impoverish Bloggers? two years ago. Smartphones and tablets are causing trouble for publishers for more reasons than one: …

Frictionless Loyalty Programs – FAASO’s Case Study

1 August 2014

The quick service restaurant chain FAASO's recently launched MOBILE wrAPP, an ordering, payment cum loyalty app. Available on Android, iOS and Windows, the app lets users locate stores, browse the…

Does Cloud Increase Vendor Lockin Risk?

25 July 2014

For all the marketingspeak from technology providers about open systems blah blah blah, seasoned CIOs know that every software purchase is accompanied by a certain level of risk of getting…

Marketable Items Let You Have Your Content And Eat It Too

18 July 2014

In his blog post titled Wasted Words – Why Marketing Content Longer than 3 to 5 Items Does Not Work, Gartner Research Director Hank Barnes makes a strong case to technology…