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Brisbane

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2007

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Elton's blog archive

2014 (12) 2013 (8)

Elton Cane

Digital product delivery at News Corp Australia

Message Posts: 116 Comments: 54

Bio Interested in digital disruption, innovation and evolution in two industries: news media and financial services. Career History Digital product management & delivery, web development, fintech journalism, research, marketing. Used to work for Finextra in London and still help out with research projects, Asia Pacific events etc.

Blogs

Future Finance

Would you pay to put your mortgage out to tender?

18 Sep 2014

An Aussie start-up with a new take on online mortgage brokerage is betting a good number of people will. Flongle encourages consumers to carefully map out their ideal mortgage for a new property or refinancing, and then for a fee anonymously put it out to Flongle's network of lenders and brokers to bid on in a "mortgage contest". In a way...

Future Finance

Contactless payments are not a choice

29 Aug 2014

If you want a new debit or credit card in Australia, you're getting PayWave or PayPass - there's no choice. And Australian police forces, and at least some consumers, don't like it. Police are bemoaning an increase in contactless credit and debit card fraud arising from stolen tap and go cards, and point to increases in handbag thefts, car break-i...

Future Finance

Cryptocurrency can cure cancer

07 Aug 2014

There's been a lot of hype and controversy about Bitcoin. Exchanges have bloomed, been taken down, been hacked and evolved. Regulators are running this way and that. The tech and mainstream media has jumped on board, variously predicting crash and burn or a transformed digital currency future. And there have been a bunch of followers, tweaking the...

Future Finance

Will regulation strangle or enable 'quasi-banks'?

26 Mar 2014

The answer seems to depend on where in the world you are, and who's backing these new entrants. News today out of Australia and China highlights two possible approaches. In Australia, one of the promises brought into government by the conservatives who took power last year was a "root and branch" inquiry into the state of the country's fi...

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Elton is Commenting on

Aussies to ditch physical wallets for mobiles by 2021 - CBA

I'd like to have a look at the actual wording of the question, to see what 'putting trust in banks for mobile wallets' actually means. It makes sense that people would trust their banks rather than government to manage a mobile wrapper for payment instruments. But as Jim says, that doesn't necessarily mean people would trust their banks to look after digital representations of primary government issued forms of ID and licensing.

25 Mar 2014 Reply Read article

Oxford University spin-out targets secure P2P mobile payments

Oxford v Cambridge - sounds like an opportunity for a new kind of Boat Race.

03 Feb 2014 Reply Read article

Revisiting Bitcoin - initial experience and questions

I almost forgot the question. This is a volatile currency, and in the recent past pretty big devaluations have come off the back of hacking and theft incidents (and take down of SilkRoad marketplace). But $1 million of Bitcoins were stolen from an Australian online bank last week, and I just read this story today about $5 million worth and a possibly dodgy Chinese Bitcoin platform going missing in action But the bubble persists?

14 Nov 2013 Reply Read article

RBA launches probe into Oz banking outages

Westpac being just the most recent of a litany of Aussie bank operational outages, it does make sense to highlight it in this article. But I agree that NAB has had more than its fair share of outages, which insufficient IT management structure and attention would contribute towards. It's also worth viewing this in light of Aussie banks' IT outsourcing arrangements, which are set to increase driven mainly by the high Aussie dollar and senior management desire to keep the record profits rolling in. Westpac in particular has made a number of recent job cuts/offshoring announcements, with some IT jobs in the mix. If you believe tips to Aussie IT press or posts from members on the Financial Services Union website, its IT department could end up losing between 1000 - 2400 FTEs in the next year or so, as current employees are forced to engage in "knowledge transfer" with existing and new offshore partners. Westpac for the moment says that offshoring just involves 150 IT staff, and that numbers will naturally fall away as it gets closer to completing its core banking replacement with CSC's Celeriti (nee Hogan) in 2013-2014. But I wonder whether low morale in Westpac IT could contribute towards the outages? And whether the RBA's intervention is informed by a desire to make sure offshore arrangements (and Westpac are not alone here) are managed effectively without detriment to customer service levels and system availability?

21 Feb 2012 Reply Read article