An Aussie Take On Banking
This is a must read article on the way banking is going. This is a flavour.
Apple has 400 million account holders holding an Apple Store or iTunes account, that’s more than the top 3 banks in the world have in retail banking customers. Starbucks, which processes more than 2m transactions every week in the US, took in deposits of $US3 billion on their in-store App-based debit or gift card this year. That puts them ahead of the 6,985 smaller institutions in the US who on average did around $185 million in deposits in 2011, and the 440 midsize institutions who averaged $2.6 billion in deposits. Imagine that! A coffee company that is better at taking deposits than 95 per cent of the FDIC insured banks in the US, and they don’t even have a banking license.
So are Apple and Starbucks, the next Barclays or Visa?
Traditional banking is dead!
Even The Mafia Are Cutting Costs
I woke up this morning and found a Findus lasagne on my pillow!
[From a Radio 5 listener!]
How To Shoot Penguins
I like penguins, and it was one of the reasons, I joined the London Zoo.
But in the new BBC series; Penguins – Spy In The Huddle, which is previewed in the papers today, there does seem to be some amazing shots of everybody’s favourite birds. There is more here in the Daily Mail, which includes a video. The article in The Times is more technical describing how fifty cameras were used, some of which went to a cold watery grave. One egg camera was even stolen by a sea bird.
I shall be watching on Monday night. Probably along, with a good proportion of the UK population! the iPlayer was made for television like this.
The Anonymous Widower 