Author Archive

At the Center for Future Banking we are actively examining the mobile space and attempting to understand the technical, social and business drivers that will define the mobile payments ecosystem. The announcement a few weeks back within Informa Telecoms and Media’s recent report, Mobile Payments and Banking, caught my eye.
Since the turn of the millennium [...]

ABSTRACT: When we communicate, we rely on a large body of shared assumptions about the world that we use to understand each other. We use this intuition everywhere: when we go into a cafe, we know we can buy coffee there; we know our computer mouse won’t chomp on our fingers; and we know not [...]

JUNE 2, 2009  ABSTRACT:  Fourth Annual Underbanked Financial Services Forum   The 4th Annual Underbanked Financial Services Forum is the only of its kind in the industry and is co-produced with CFSI and SourceMedia (the publisher of the American Banker, US Banker and many other conferences and publications).  It attracts around 500 senior level executives from [...]

FEBBRUARY 20, 2009  ABSTRACT: The Science-Based Business Initiative will sponsor a monthly lunch time seminar on Fridays and will bring academic and industry scientists to campus to describe some of the breakthrough ideas that impact current and future businesses. The intent an intimate group of faculty and doctoral students to gather in a seminar environment, [...]

APRIL 8, 2009 ABSTRACT: The mainstream media, high-tech blogs and traditional banking publications feature many articles and opinion pieces about the future of banking and payments, and these stories highlight new technologies, new business models and new companies. Few of these stories feature traditional players and banks, payment processors and the traditional financial services players [...]

The traditional song for ringing in the New Year in almost every English speaking country in the world is Auld Lang Syne. It is generally credited to Robert Burns, but earlier versions precede his time. Burns combined a common Scottish folk song with his own lyrics to arrive at the version sung on New Year’s [...]

ABSTRACT: This talk will take up the question of what consumers might ideally want from payment arrangements, going beyond the obvious transaction dimensions such as flexibility, convenience, speed, or privacy. Recent findings in behavioral economics and neuroeconomics suggest that payments and consumption are psychologically entangled in the mind of the consumer, and that satisfaction with [...]

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with John Hockenberry and Adaora Udoji on “The Takeaway,” on WNYC radio. It was a great discussion, during which I stepped back for a moment from the here-and-now of the economic crisis and glanced at the sun coming up against some clouds on the horizon.It strikes me that [...]

On April 1, 2008 Bank of America announced a multiyear collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. Located on campus, the new research center is called The Center for Future Banking, and it will serve as an innovation engine to transform banking for social, economic and information environments [...]