Articles in Innovation
PayPal released version 3.0 of its mobile payment application for Google’s Android operating system, integrating Near Field Communications-based functionality enabling users to transfer funds by bumping smartphones.
BitCoin, the web’s virtual currency, isn’t without its controversy. But two things are known for sure – it’s an interesting economic experiment, and people are using it to buy real things right now.
Whether you just want to find out more about BitCoin or to actually use the currency, you may want to check out “Virtual Currency: The BitCoin Guide”.
Facebook has created an official subsidiary to handle payments.
As reported today on the blog All Facebook, a spokesperson for Facebook confirmed the move in an email, saying, “As is common in many company structures, we have established a subsidiary called Facebook Payments Inc. that helps handle payments to developers related to our Facebook Credits program.”
Chris Skinner posted a new thought provoking article on the Financial Services Blog regarding innovation. His view is innovation has nothing to do with technology. Innovation is to do with people
Peer-to-peer (P2P) micro-finance is expanding from lending marketplaces like Zopa to peer-to-peer affinity-driven financial support for a wide variety of projects. Several names are used to describe the phenomen is a kind of a crowdsourcing initiative and is usually named as crowdfunding or social finance.
There are a number of websites accomodating crowdsourcing, many of them in creative domains, as described in Ross Dawson’s article How to raise money from the crowds.
Are banks innovating in the right areas? Has the innovation in product produced greater customer satisfaction, higher margins and better banking? The recent infographic compiled by Brett King, author of the book Bank 2.0, is particularly useful to bring more food for thought on this topic.
gWallet, a recently launched company that partners with both brands and game developers to bring users virtual currency offers, is launching a new format for offers. Called the Brand Bar, the offers to earn virtual currency appears in a bar across the top of a social game on Facebook.
Per conoscere di più su Kiva e su un caso reale di Social Lending, si consiglia la lettura dell’articolo su Wired di Febbraio 2010 intitolato Matt Flannery (fondatore di Kiva).
Rather than focussing on specific products, banks should develop innovative technology to create a better way of banking and respond to the challenge of new entrants into the financial services world.
![The high stakes world of mobile payments [Infographic]](http://www.banca20.it/eng/wp-content/themes/arthemia-premium/scripts/timthumb.php?src=/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/mobilepayments_bets.png&w=80&h=80&zc=1)
