A celebration of Republic Day in the land of miracles

 

Simply put, this is an important day for me.  I would not have been around but for India’s Independence followed 3 years on by our Republic Day, now in it’s 68th glorious year. My Dad wanted to bring free kids into the world and only married once this was assured. Although I will never truly understand what it meant to the generation who made this happen for us in 1950, every year we celebrate this day is one more year India proves itself to be a land of miracles.

The sense of pride this day invokes in a billion+ hearts is hard to describe. Let me just say I am certain it evokes a certain energy and a sense of fulfilment in every Indian around the world. The sheer diversity across so many dimensions, including language, religion, tradition, occupation puts the most glorious patchwork quilt to shame. So it is truly admirable that India has won and held the mantle of largest democracy in the world over all these years.

But the amazing story of India begins way before 1000BC, making the Constitution of India a relatively recent development. The river Indus after which our country was named was home to Harappan and Mohenjo-Daro civilisations and our two epics, the Mahabarata and the Ramayana relate to events of the Epic Age which was followed by the Maurya, Gupta, Moguls and other transitions, each leaving a unique legacy.

British Rule seems miniscule in comparison to all that went before. The date for India’ Republic Day was chosen to commemorate Purna Swaraj, the Declaration of Indian Independence on 26th January 1930. The Reserve Bank of India had already been established by 1935, and in 1938 we had the issue of the first Rupee banknotes shown below.

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Thanks to the work of my father’s generation, the Rupee soon received a makeover. My generation and those to follow would enjoy the sailboat, dam, Asoka, the space craft (in 1976), the Parliament House, Mahatma Gandhi and many agricultural images. There is a nice site I found that shows a Currency Gallery of India, worth going through as it speaks volumes on how the country developed.

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The Rupee had to wait until 2010 to gain it’s symbol ‘₹’. An historic demonetisation of ₹500 and ₹1,000 was achieved in November 2016, with redesigned ₹500 notes and the new ₹2000 banknote put in circulation. This and other measures are required in the rebalancing as the great country that is India asserts herself on the world stage.

India has arguably achieved one of the highest rates of progress towards digital payments over the last year. Let us not fool ourselves, working towards achieving all of this has been hard work and will continue to be so. What we have to be grateful for is that all that has been achieved has been within a democratic framework. This is nothing short of a miracle and on this Republic Day we look forward to money supporting the population so effectively that it ceases to occupy so much importance and becomes just the catalyst we can take for granted, to support over a billion livelihoods and the huge future India has ahead of her.

 

Jai Hind!

Payments systems in the US – A sleeping giant awakes

 

This weekend as we joined in wishing our American friends and family around the world a wonderful Independence Day, my thoughts turned to how Payment Systems are changing in historic ways in America, in many ways setting off a chain reaction that will transform the way we transfer value, not just in the US but world-wide.

 

The danger was that the land that introduced the first universal credit card back in 1950 had done such a good job of meeting consumer needs that it would be hard to get people to adopt new methods. It took a number of different initiatives of a decade or more to finally get this to happen.

 

Mobile Payments starts to take off at last

Did you know that mobile payments in America are expected to grow from $3.5b spent by 16 m shoppers in 2014 to a massive $27.5b by next year? Even then this will still be just a fraction of the $4.3t retail store payments made in the US. The common man or woman in America is seeing changes in the way they pay for tolls on the roads and how they pay each other, as well as pay bills and shop online.

 

Digital wallets – not there yet, but on the move

For the longest time it seemed as if this would not happen, especially after the strong push towards digital wallets in 2011 seemed to fizzle out. However now it seems this was simply the calm before the storm. Each side has reinforced itself as major battle commences to win hearts, minds and mobile wallets, but this time I believe what happens in America will not stay in America.

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The US market becomes NFC-ready

Finally this year we have seen important moves towards new forms of mobile payments vi a NFC, QR Codes, MST, BLE and more, with a reported 70% increase in mobile commerce in the US since 2012.

On the one hand US POS is finally beginning to support EMV, as the October 2015 deadline looms.  As the difference between the cost of contactless and non-contactless terminals is not vast, retail outlets are increasingly becoming NFC-ready.

 

Retailers look for online and mobile innovation

On the other hand top US Retailers have finally realised that the future of their brands depends on a golden braid of inextricably woven marketing and payments campaigns that rely on ever deeper market understanding to help get, keep and grow their customer base.

As in other countries, transport is becoming one of the first applications for consumer adoption of digital payments, as existing methods for paying get removed and replaced by new ones. Online payments are now widespread, but fear of loss of identity and security breaches still leaves a gap to be filled, causing a lot of focus on biometrics, authentication and fraud prevention. However for adoption to deepen across America the real driver will be offers and marketing campaigns.

 

Marketing  and Payments: Perfect Partners

Here is where mobile payments comes into it’s own, with a unique appeal with respect to marketing. By 2016 over 196 million smartphone users become accessible to persuasion to buy in new ways. When Amazon was founded on July 5, 21 years ago (Happy Anniversary Amazon!), Jeff Bezos and team showed that deep understanding of what we want can actually be used to help us in finding what we’re looking for without proving overly offensive. Now we are at the cusp of a new revolution, as every possible route is being explored in pursuit of a new American Dream. The subtlety with which the new marketing capabilities are used will largely decide how quickly people adopt new payment methods.

 

Loyalty provides an incentive for change

Today store-issued credit cards and store rewards are being added to Apple Pay, Google Android Pay. Soon Walgreens hopes their 80 million members of Balance Rewards program will be able to use loyalty points with Apple Pay, and all eagerly anticipate smartphone, device and watch payments to increase. The new mobile payments methods will allow consumers to save on their shopping, by directly saving with the use of loyalty rewards.

 

American providers look for world markets

But this time American providers have a much larger canvas. If they get the digital loyalty-payments nexus right, there are other markets in a high state of readiness across the Atlantic that can help their brands grow. Apparently I am not the only one to leave my loyalty card behind, on the day when I find a retailer has one of their nicest sales on - in the UK unused loyalty cards reportedly cost us shoppers an estimated £5.2 billion.

 

The future – real time payments

But as I have said before, the real value comes when channels are made to properly work together, and this is what is starting to happen in the US. On my recent visit a short while ago I found payments really getting embedded into very interesting user experiences thanks to growing investment in FinTech.

Consumers and merchants are likely to see a lot of value-add over the coming months and years as Americans increasingly declare independence from cash payments, especially if payments can become real-time, something that has proven elusive until now. Importantly, it will not be long before the ecosystems grow beyond the US, and partnerships that are under formation now are likely to be important at least in the first phase of expansion.

 

Happy Independence Week America!

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The Digital Money Game – a Journey Most Enjoyable, and the best is yet to come!

 

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The world of financial services gets ever more interesting as money goes digital. Shift Thought has just conducted interviews with over 50 of the leading payments experts around the world. We are delighted with all we have to share with you from this exercise. Stay tuned for our upcoming blog series on how The Digital Money Game is changing differently in each part of the world – and how to position yourself in the winning camp.

Warm wishes for New Year 2015!

From The Shift Thought Team - Making the right connections to help money go digital

Authors of The Digital Money Game, Virtual Currencies – From Secrecy to Safety

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Happy Thanksgiving!

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The Shift Thought team wish all our readers a bountiful Thanksgiving. May the table of the world be filled with wonderful things, this year and for many years to follow.

Our grateful thanks to you for sharing this exciting journey, as we seek to innovate to make money digital in a way that can improve lives.

 


Authors of The Digital Money Game, Virtual Currencies – From Secrecy to Safety

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http://www.linkedin.com/in/charmaineoak

Join us on Twitter @ShiftThoughtDM and The Digital Money Group on LinkedIn