I’m fascinated by history (hated the subject when I was in school). It is no surprise, that as I learn more about banking and money, one cannot help but be fascinated with paper money or currency notes. The idea and…
Want to attend the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal this year? Well, I am willing to sponsor 100% of the trip for a deserving boy and a girl from Pakistan. I have cited on many forums and wanted to reiterate…
The IBAN is slowly becoming the de facto standard of identifying a beneficiary account. Barring the US, many countries are now jumping on-board the IBAN bandwagon. At the time of writing this article, 82 countries are using IBAN. However, the…
For the past couple of years, I have been talking around the world about the Fragments State of Our Payment Systems. With over 1,900 payment systems around the world, less than 3 percents are connected and can talk to each…
When you’re young, you learn to hate history! You wonder if studying history even does any good to your life later on. A phrase I read again and again in my history class was “Spice Trade”. Today, when I look…
I present to you the following scenario. Day 1: Single IOU Let’s say you walk into your bank in America and present $ 100,000 to the bank, and ask them to make a Cashier’s Cheque for you. No problem they…
In 2012, I answered a question on Quora, How will money transferring between countries look in five years? I did not edit or touch the answer in any manner for five years. Well, now that the 5 years are up and…
I never knew about Alfred Escher and learned about him quite by accident. I happened to be reading a great post about how the Knights Templar invented modern banking on Chris Skinner’s blog when I discovered an article about Alfred…
Understanding the Behavioral Aspect of Mobile Wallet Commerce — What years of research tells us. There should be no doubt that as a society, today, we are more dependent on our mobile phones than ever before. Our smartphone represents the…
ACH (or Automated Clearing House) is the quintessential payment method in America that can do a debit/credit directly into your bank account electronically. The system itself is extremely outdated and hence the race for a new faster payments system in US, although…
The bitter truth is simple: There aren’t any mobile payments in Pakistan. Period. I had to think long and hard on this one, just to be double-sure, and the answer is still just that. None. Call me a pompous ass,…
Determining the price for a product or a service is the penultimate question. The money-transfer industry is no different. At present, the remittance industry has more or less the following models for pricing: The combination of the above-mentioned three models…