Hi from Cape Town, South Africa, where I am on vacation, but really schlepping my wife’s bags as she presents at Design Indaba. Still, my attention wanders to the familiar: I’m taking pictures of all the non-bank financial services centers here, which I’ll share later, and noting the financial sector…
Rachel Schneider’s Breaking News: Monopoly Bank Fails
I’m honored that the one and the only Rachel Schneider (CFSI’s Innovation leader) felt compelled to share her musings on board games and consumer finance: Hasbro is launching a new version of Monopoly. Described in the New York Times yesterday (“No Dice, No Money, No Cheating. Are You Sure This…
The Curse with Helping the Poor Save
A big part of why I love my job is because we are trying to provide the underbanked mass market with greater financial freedom. It’s great to provide lower cost payments, the ability to build credit, better credit decision tools, greater transparency and convenience. But the holy grail, really, is…
Kimberly Gartner on PiggyMojo: “Turning Impulse Buying into Impulse Saving”
CFSI’s fabled Kimberly Gartner has honored me by guest contributing this post: Recently, I have become smitten by an online/mobile service that is designed to help couples save money together for their savings goal. Since I’m convinced that 2011 is going to be the year of underbanked savings, I asked…
Involuntarily Unbanked
On the last day of last year, the St. Louis Fed banked published a fascinating and somewhat bizarre report, titled “A System Dynamics Approach to Understanding the Use of Banks and Alternative Financial Services in St. Louis.” Drawing on their apparently famed complex systems capabilities, the report breaks down into smaller pieces how and why…
The Power of Rent
Since my first post on Experian’s acquisition of CFSI’s portfolio company, RentBureau, more great news has hit, not just in a press release, but the Baltimore Sun and others have run stories: As PRBC’s Michael Nathans envisioned, the founders of RentBureau then built and now Experian and VantageScore are realizing,…
Financial Bliss
Saw a little “infographic” in the Banker today, under the heading “Ignorance is Bliss,” produced by Javelin Research. CFSI’s Rachel Schneider quickly absolved me of the notion that it’s surprising people are paying less attention to their finances. “Who wants to track bad news?” I guess so, however, I would…
Lose the Card and Get an Account
Sandra Block’s article in USA Today last week was yet another page in the large volume of “beware of prepaid” stories published in the last year or so. It’s a familiar motif, “working class Peter got a prepaid card only to discover he was getting feed to death.” The five…
New Type of Stimulus
If you follow these things, you’ve probably heard about the Treasury’s new (if uncompellingly named) MyAccountCard pilot. Issued by soon-to-be Green Dot’s Bonneville Bank, managed by Green Dot, the US Treasury will send these GPR cards to 600,000 underbanked households, suggesting they use the card to receive their tax refunds.…
Sosas Address the Underinvested
The Sosa Brothers drive me nuts! Mostly because I’m jealous. Really. They are visionary, they are charismatic, they’re successful, they are creative, they live in Austin, they have the word “Lab” in their company name, and they are committed to improving the lives of millions of people who have less…