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Location

Glasgow

Member since

2007

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Writes about

Payments Regulation & Compliance Retail banking

Ainsley's blog archive

2016 (1) 2015 (1) 2010 (2) 2009 (3) 2008 (1)

Ainsley's long read archive

2023 (1)

Ainsley Ward

Vice President, Payments Solutions at CGI

Message Posts: 8 Comments: 26

Bio Executive Leader solving the Payments Modernization conundrum; Vice President, Payments Solutions at CGI; Consultant; Speaker; Writer; Innovator; Accelerator; Archer Career History See www.linkedin.com/in/ainsley for more. Any views and opinions that I express on this site are purely my own and do not represent the views of my employers present or past.

Blogs

Trends in Financial Services

Technodazzle

06 Jun 2016

I was reading an article a few days ago on the plateau of ebook reader sales and the slow retreat back to paper (here), and of course this lead my thoughts back to our own industry – particularly the nonsensical cheque lobbyists. However, does this harking back to a bygone era of paper banking reveal a bad case of Technodazzle in our industry? Tec...

Let's all go rob a bank

23 Dec 2015

If I walk into a shop, pick up any item and then walk out again, the chances are that store security will stop me and I'll probably end up in court pretty soon. Likewise if I walked into a bank branch and demanded all the cash, it's likely my face will end up on Crimewatch UK and the court will beckon. So I won't try either of those crimes (even i...

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Long reads

Is Payments-as-a-Service (PaaS) a new thing?

05 Sep 2023

Despite renewed interest in the model, payments-as-a-service (PaaS) is not a new concept. Historically, many banks have banded together to create shared service centres to accomplish tasks or activities that are difficult to do alone. For example, in Denmark, alongside a few major banks, there are three banking ‘centrals’ that provide banking core ...

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Ainsley is Commenting on

Banks are becoming "museums of technology" says ex-Barclays boss

It's been clear for a number of years that the problem of growing technology debt would come back and haunt banks that have continually invested in minimal compliance rather than modernization. Insights gathered by CGI back up Antony's statements with over 90% of banks believing that back office legacy prevents them accessing the benefits of spend on digitization. It's clear that some will up their game and perform 'lift and shift' migrations to new digital platforms, but we'll also see a big move to BaaS providers as discussed in the recent FCS webinar Financial Cloud Series 2023: Entering new and niche markets with Ba... (finextra.com)

12 Jun 2023 Reply Read article

UK looks to improve bill payments with 'Request to Pay' initiative

This kind of service has been available in Belgium for the last 10-15 years (Zoomit by Isabel) and is a huge convenience for consumers and businesses. Delivery of invoicing in the same channel used for payment makes it easy to keep track of bills and the reconciliation data provided by the system makes it much easier and cheaper for utilities to get paid. This is definitely a model that more markets should look at.

07 Sep 2018 Reply Read article

Blind woman sues CBA over touchscreen POS machines

This is long overdue. The security and accessibility compromises that were made by the card brands to proliferate mobile payments were a travesty and hopefully this will help to pare them back. PIN on glass hugely contravenes disability legislation in most countries - and was hugely damaging to the POS industry as it kicked the chair from under companies doing things securely and with consideration. The Banking industry needs to learn a valuable lesson about finding the balance between deployment of new technology and ensuring that all sectors of the public are able to access services without hinderance. Particularly as we move into the Open API era and 'app-ization' of banking, the instinct to place technology over customers is highly tempting, but this is people's money that we are dealing with. Unlike any other industry, if we deny service to the most vulnerable in our society - those with disabilities, the older generation, those not at home with technology - we not only isolate them, we run the risk of making their lives increasingly difficult and forcing them to find more expensive or risky solutions to their issues.

17 Mar 2018 Reply Read article

Debit cards to overtake cash in UK by 2021

It's funny that this is a story because apparently it already happened in 2010 - or were they wrong then? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/8177237/Britons-use-their-debit-cards-more-than-cash.html The biggest issue with trying to demonstrate this trend is that there are no accurate records of cash transactions - the only number that you can use is declared cash transactions that are included for taxation purposes. It's great that card and FP volumes are increasing - I'm a huge supported of the cash-less society, but before we pat ourselves on the back as an industry, there needs to be a reality check. There are still large sectors of the community that are not terminalised, surcharging for low value transactions and little or no restriction on cash usage. Once these issues are solved, THEN we can start to talk about proper progress.

23 May 2016 Reply Read article