Wednesday 7 December 2011

Holidays are Coming - Brussel Sprouts and PCI DSS Compliance - By Marc Darling

Brussel Sprouts, hated them. These evil little green things just wanted to ruin a perfectly good dinner. After the joy of Christmas morning, playing with toys (I am talking about my childhood here, and yes, I can still remember it) and finally getting the “GET TO THE TABLE” call. Crackers pulled, reading the jokes (yes, still the basis of my humour till today) and putting on funny hats – laughing with grandparents. And then dinner is served, and it’s like the uber Sunday lunch! Added extras, cocktail sausages with bacon wrapped round (they weren’t called pigs in blankets back then!) – what genius came up with that? Freshly made stuffing and gravy, the turkey (we did have goose a few times) lots of roasties, good old veggies, and then, there it would be, the sprout. Now I never cheated per se, I was a good boy (at this time) and always did what my Mum told me to. So I would eat the sprouts, but only by dissecting them into the smallest possible size, and then trying to disguise the foul taste with a forkful of nice, tasty food.

Talking of things hard to digest, PCI DSS compliance. A ‘grudge’ project, with a whiff of “brand protection” to try make it easier for the merchant to swallow? With a huge investment needed to segregate networks, the question for retailers is how to get that stamp on their PCI DSS audit, and worry about more important things, such as selling their merchandise.

There are some quick wins to be had, but it's surely important to maintain a long term view. Rather than making rash decisions on short term solutions, there is a commonly held view that in the future, retailers will want the following:

A single view of their customers across all channels, and all borders
The ability for customers to pay with the currency of their choice
Choice, for the retailer, of pin entry device, acquirer and payment methods
A solution built to enable the European payment standards (ISO 20022)
A scalable solution to allow for business growth
To prevent internal and external fraudulent attacks
The ability to have real-time identity checks
To gain insight into customers’ behaviour and motivations
To secure repeat business and decrease promotional costs
To engender long-term loyalty and increase campaign ROI

And, perhaps more importantly, a safe pair of hands – an experienced chef, with a long history of bringing together just the right ingredients to turn seemingly unpalatable ingredients into a rewarding culinary experience for the most discerning diner – such as The Logic Group!

Would you believe it, last Christmas, I tried chopping up some brussel sprouts, blanching them, and then frying them off in some butter with shallots, pancetta, garlic a little Dijon mustard, splash of white wine, and they were divine! Long live the brussel sprout!!!

Tuesday 6 December 2011

The 20 Best New Startups Of 2011

Simple wants to get rid of bank fees altogether and become a whole new mobile bank.

Founders: Alex Payne, Josh Reich and Shamir Karkal
Funding: Raised $10 million in August and has raised ~$13 million to date.

What it is: People keep their money in more than one place and they get charged a lot of money by every bank. Simple (formerly called BankSimple) wants to merge all accounts into one and do away with fees by splitting the net interest between all of the banks involved.
It's partnering with Visa to create one, ultimate credit card that connects to all of its partner banks and 40,000 fee-free ATMs

It opened its beta a few weeks ago and will officially launch in 2012.

One in Four Starbucks Transactions Now Done Via Mobile

Starbucks customers apparently are finding buying via mobile as addictive as the company’s coffee.
Less than a year after Starbucks launched an app that allows mobile payments, it has hosted 26 million such transactions on iOS, BlackBerry and Android, according to the chain. One in four Starbucks transactions is now executed via mobile.
The mobile-payments initiative has built momentum recently: In the nine weeks after it was released, there were 3 million transactions. But in the past nine weeks, there have been 6 million, says Adam Brotman, SVP and general manager of Starbucks. He adds that New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago and San Jose, Calif., are the top cities by volume for mobile purchases.
Brotman declined to say exactly how many people had downloaded the app, except that it’s in the “millions.”
Starbucks presented the stats to emphasize its contention that 2011 was the “year of mobile” for the company. Among other recent highlights was the company’s Cup Magic augmented reality app, which has spurred 450,000 “engagement points” since its November release. An engagement point refers to a use of the app. According to Brotman, 91% of people who downloaded the app used it.
Finally, $110 million has been reloaded to customers’ Starbucks cards via mobile, Brotman says. For comparison’s sake, $2.4 billion was loaded onto Starbucks cards overall in 2011.
When asked why mobile payments seem to have caught on at Starbucks, Brotman said he thought convenience was a major factor. “It’s a faster, easier way to pay,” he said. “We not only developed the feature, but we also rolled out scanners in our locations.”