News Bank
N°0-2013/0
Abstract
Eodem tempore etiam Hymetii praeclarae indolis viri negotium est actitatum, cuius hunc novimus esse textum. cum Africam pro consule regeret Carthaginiensibus victus inopia iam lassatis, ex horreis Romano populo destinatis frumentum dedit, pauloque postea cum provenisset segetum copia, integre sine ulla restituit mora.
Mobile world
Security
New business opportunity for wealthmanagement
Mobile world
- A mobile app to lock on and secure your credit card
Security
- Claveo : account transactions alerts and authorizing / blocking action on your mobile
New business opportunity for wealthmanagement
- The Bitcoin Richest : Accumulating Large Balances
- A New Large-scale Bitcoin Merchant Sets Out to Teach Amazon A Lesson
- NestEgg : Online Wealth Management advisory
City Bank Texas
Lock / unlock your credit card
Claveo
Securize your account transactions
Bitcoins
New business opportunities
Mobile world
A mobile app to lock on and secure your credit card
".... City Bank of Texas now offers a debit card on/off switch: If customers ever want to switch off their debit card, because it was misplaced, or if funds are running low, they simply move the toggle on the My Cards page of the mobile app."
- My point of view : Definetly practical and secure ! Select the card in the app menu and just select the on/off switch button. The customer's choice is immediately validated and transmitted to bank systems (real time). The bank is then able to authorize or not the realized transactions. No need to oppose when you have a doubt : stolen, or not stolen, lost or not lost …. and trying to see beyond one can activiate and deactivate on demand his/her credit card. Can be seen as an exceptional extra real time security feature around credit cards.
- Source : Netbanker
- Other links Une application mobile pour verrouiller sa carte de crédit
Security
Claveo : account transactions alerts and authorizing / blocking action on your mobile
- "Claveo Software - providing a simple mobile app that alerts the user whenever anyone logs into their account online and provides an account open or block capability. ... Claveo Server Software is powered using industry-standard and open source software. -Manages all Claveo Mobile clients; Military-grade AES 256-bit and RSA 4096-bit cryptography; highly scalable, connects with our generic Claveo Mobile client even if being run standalone, neither stores nor sees any secret data, identicon support for spoofing prevention....Claveo was selected as a finalist in the Innotribe Startup Challenge to present at SIBOS in Osaka, Japan"
- My point of view : Highly secure this solution is suitable for private banking customers needs.
- Source :Claveo
- Other links : The 15 most innovative firms providing banking solutions
News and business opportunities for wealth management
The Bitcoin Richest: Accumulating Large Balances
- “At the current exchange rate of $6.50 per BTC, the top address on the list holds control to an astonishing $2.85 million in total value (as of 6/20/12).” What can we learn from this list? First, it demonstrates that a broad group of people are comfortable enough with the bitcoin crypto to exit the traditional banking system and leave significant value on the blockchain for extended periods. I can only guess that they must have a rigorous onsite and offsite backup process for retrieving the private key or perhaps they rely on Brainwallet for the utmost in mobility. …. But why leave your wealth in a distributed proof-of-work system instead of a traditional bank? In a broad sense, bitcoin wealth offers protection from unpredictable political risk such as sovereign confiscation, excessive taxation, and capital controls at the border. In addition to preservation of value when compared to national fiat currencies, bitcoin wealth eliminates bank solvency risk and the risk of exogenous shocks to the uber-leveraged financial pyramid. … One of the challenges confronting bitcoin consultants in certain industries is how to transfer bitcoin value in amounts of $10 million or more for purposes of trade settlement and for the mitigation of jurisdictional bank risk. With the total bitcoin market capitalization at approximately $60 million and the largest single address holding merely $2.85 million, you can begin to see the obstacles. The bitcoin market is still too nascent and small for robust use in global trade settlement. Liquidity and depth would have to increase significantly to accommodate requests without severe price disruption.….”
- My point of view : BitCoins becomes more and more interesting and more people use it even for large amounts of money : because it's free, secure, and discrete => anonymous, like cash but more secure. Private banking might use it for fast and discrete transactions with their customers. Bitcoin transactions occur over a peer-to-peer network, it costs nothing to receive them. But watch out BitCoins goes with the risks of money laundering and non authorized transactions in the scope of terrorist activity. BitCoins transactions should be converted to "standard" money quite rapidly because its value (rate) might fluctuate very fast. Besides, its liquidity or more precisely its convertibility is not guaranteed : find a BitCoins buyer in exchange of euros or dollars might be more painfull fo fast transactions which are by the way irreversible. Should this money resist to a liquidity crisis....not so sure. This money is not an official one, so governement might declare it illegal which would drastically reduce its benefit. See next article.
- Source : Bitcoins richest accumulating large balance;
A New Large-scale Bitcoin Merchant Sets Out to Teach Amazon A Lesson
- "BitcoinStore, an online electronics mega-store that deals exclusively in bitcoins went live this last week. It's not the first company to trade electronics for bitcoins; BitElectronics opened just a couple of weeks ago. But BitcoinStore is doing it at cutthroat prices on an inventory of 500,000 items, ranging from laptops to motion sensors to binoculars. Company representatives claim that by not having to pay credit card fees, they will be able to keep prices 1 to 10 percent lower than the top competitors. … Roger Ver, the founder of the site, launched it to serve as a high-level demonstration for companies like Amazon and NewEgg, a lesson in the benefits of Bitcoin. …..show both consumers and business owners that using Bitcoin can drastically lower the cost of providing products," … "Ideally what we want this site to do is to force Amazon, Newegg, Buy.com [now Rakuten.com], to start accepting Bitcoin. If they do that, our job is done. We're not going to be able to compete with them on that size or level…. While it's not the case for every product, BitcoinStore is beating its top competitors' prices on many of the items they sell. For example, the same Xerox printer that costs US $3263 at Amazon costs the equivalent of $2366 at BitcoinStore. …. But Holmquist says that it's BitcoinStore's payment method that will allow it to keep prices low in the long run. Because Bitcoin transactions occur over a peer-to-peer network, it costs nothing to receive them. BitcoinStore is using BitPay, a well-established payment processor, to conduct the transactions, and the fees they pay for this service are less than what they would be paying to credit card companies, which generally take around 2.3 percent from each purchase. More importantly, Bitcoin removes the ability of credit card customers to commit chargeback fraud, a scam in which customers dispute the charge on an item that they have already received with the intent of getting it for free. "I think the chargebacks are really going to continue to be a problem in the industry. … If the higher purpose of BitcoinStore is to evangelize Bitcoin to the giants of online commerce, then the timing of its launch may be problematic. Amazon just released its own virtual currency last month, a token system called Amazon Coins…."
- My point of view : Just to illutrate the fact that virtual money is no longer an innovation to be ignored, even so Facebook droped its own virtual money couple of months ago. Innovation around virtual money and bitcoins is one of them (the most universal one today I should say) start to be abunddant. So that startups, eCommerce and even ECB (European Central Bank, see other links) take an interest in it. This innovation, not quite mature, emergent I should say, has to be followed. And remenber : Because Bitcoin transactions occur over a peer-to-peer network, it costs nothing to receive them. See previous article too.
- Source : IEEE Spectrum
- Other links :
NestEgg : online wealth management advisory
- "NestEgg provides a white label online wealth management advisory tool for banks to offer to the mass affluent : a MoneyDesktop for investment accounts. ... Clients and prospects visit the website, get tailored portfolio recommendations based on partner models, and perform sophisticated analytics, like back-testing and Monte Carlo simulations. They then can choose to open a new account directly or get in touch with an advisor. Once an account is open, performance is tracked and the account is automatically rebalanced. ... NestEgg is a plug-and-play solution that is private-labeled with a fully configurable investment philosophy, investment profiling system, and branding. Our partners decide on their recommended investment vehicles, allocations and expected returns."
- My point of view : Retail banking evolves toward digital banking, and I should say that private banking in the long run shall not be an exception. Client expectations are changing. Consumer internet applications look great and work on the iPad. Digital natives as the new target of wealth management advisory, this tool evidences a tricky approach: capture some clients (digital natives, Y gen or whatever) with the technology before "they then can choose to open a new account directly or get in touch with an advisor". Technology and core business model of private banking : the advisor. This is also a relevant approach for the bank to convince new mass affluent clients (prospect) by relying on technology. NestEgg was selected as a finalist in the Innotribe Startup Challenge at SIBOS (Osaka, Japan)."
- Source : NestEgg
- Other links : The 15 most innovative firms providing banking solutions