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Nick leads innovation at Barclaycard who in 2017 processed some £250bn of payments. We go back to 1966 and the start of credit cards and continue the narrative through the present into the future.

Kerigan.jpg">Kerigan-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150">Cards used to be perceived as bits of plastic that we all still recognise.

However as FS gets ever more digital and ever more virtual what “is” a card – especially when physical cards are likely to be less and less used over time?

What is a “card” when cards, at some point in the future are no longer produced?

What is a card now in fact? All these topics and many more are discussed including: 

• the World Cup
• incumbents very much up to speed with digital FS now
• partnering and collaboration are the spirit of the age
• Nick’s 20yrs in payments
• “something like 2/3 of the VC money of the past couple of years has gone into payments”
• Barclaycard’s introduction of credit cards into the UK in 1966; how the team approached it and how long it took to getting it all working well for all concerned
• how a “card” works; its really “a way to pay” – your card is used with the merchant; behind the merchant sits the “acquirer” (bank); the acquirer moves the information to the “scheme” (Visa/Mastercard); they send that information on to the card issuer who then decides whether to authorise or not the transaction
• then the information flows back through the same chain – all super-rapidly of course and says “authorised” or “declined”
• fitbit payments
• interoperability; globally
• rules and protections from schemes
• manual machines in the 60s/70s with central mainframe processing of paper receipts from “zip-zap” machines; then replaced 80s by “epdq” machine connected through telephone lines; through to more recently chip and pin and then contactless technology
• Visa and Mastercard’s origins as an “association” model to connect all the banks together
• what a card is when you no longer use it but fitbits, phones etc
• online, in-app payments
• how a phone acts as a credit card, tokens, NFC chips and your “identity”
• card virtualisation – cf music
• invisible payments – eg Amazon first and now Uber – in both cases you do not “make” an explicit payment but a payment happens implicitly
• challenges with the Uber model -eg & esp when is the payment value agreed?
• notifications and the importance of visibility around invisible payments – er?!
• Barclaycard’s partnering with the Fintech Flux – receipts, proof of concepts et al
• what kinds of Fintech are attractive and which are not for an incumbent to partner with
• the importance of adding value not just to the consumer but also the merchants (generally forgotten but they are the ones who have to pay for and install new ideas)
• blending physical and virtual standards and approaches – “omnichannel”
• the relevance of click and collect
• why one has to wait for a physical card to arrive in the post if it can be all made virtual anyway?
• Barclaycard in the US powers the Uber credit card; you can do the whole application from within the Uber app and no need to wait for a physical card as it downloads the virtual card
• in the UK you can download a virtual card onto Android right away without waiting for the physical card to come
• identity – the sticking point/challenge
• biometrics can be oversold/overvalued
• Barclaycard’s partnership with BankID in Sweden as a virtual solution to identity – all apps on your phone use it to verify your ID
• a shoutout for interesting Fintech partners to collaborate with

And much much more

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