Social Networks As Money Transfer Brokers?

Wired has a fascinating new article "The Future of Money: It's Flexible, Frictionless, and (Almost) Free" which takes a look at the growing number of methods to exchange money online. Way beyond PayPal, credit card companies and the banks themselves, payment systems are coming online at a furious pace attempting to strip down the fees and dethrone the venerable stalwarts of the industry. Utilizing social sites and the opened up engines some of the largest online retailers, developers are finding new ways of exchanging cash and making it more cost effective.

It's a lengthy article but well worth the read if you are wondering how money will be exchanged in the future... and dare I say, the future is nigh!

Here's a sample:

"Whatever the future of payments looks like, it will probably be brought about by people like Christian Lanng. A tall and wide 31-year-old with a booming, operatic voice, Lanng is sitting on the couch of his venture backer’s house in Copenhagen. When he talks about the way banks and credit card companies process payments, he gets so upset that his entire body tenses and his voice rises until it’s echoing off the stark white walls. “This is the main battleground of capitalism!” he says. “This is the heart of it.”" 

Dell Finding Sales Via Twitter

Dell seams to have found the right formula for making money via Twitter, attributing $3 million in sales to posts on the social networking site. According to PCWorld, "Dell Outlet uses Twitter to promote clearance sales, coupons, and other discount-related fodder... It also may provide a much-needed business model for Twitter by giving the social networking site a valid reason to charge for corporate accounts." Of course $3 million is not a huge sum where Dell is concerned but in these trying economic times it's nothing to sneeze at either. With some simple math we can deduce that @DellOutlet, which has some 600,000 followers, can place a value of $5 on each follower. Interesting...

Canadian Carriers Team Up To Offer Money Transfer Through Cellphones

The big 3 Canadian mobile phone carriers, Rogers, Bell, and Telus have collaborated to form a jointly owned company called EnStream LP. “The end vision is you can take your billfold or purse and stick it into your phone,” said David Robinson, vice-president of new business planning at Rogers Wireless.

According to the Globe and Mail, "The first step involves software called Zoompass, which customers can download from EnStream to their phones beginning Monday. It will let them draw up to $1,000 a day from their bank accounts and credit cards and send it to other individuals using the same software. Recipients will have instant access to the money, which will be held in trust by HSBC Bank Canada. Recipients will access funds by moving them to their own bank accounts or using a special MasterCard that will be credited instantaneously."

This type of transaction via mobile phones is not new globally, what appears to be new is the collaborative effort of the carriers which could, in my mind, have it's pro's and con's. Perhaps working together will keep the cost to consumers down, but we are talking about cell phone companies and banks here, neither of which have great reputations in that department...

Dell Cashing In On Twitter Craze

According to Venture Beat Dell has used Twitter posts (tweets) to ring up $1 million in sales over the past 18 months. "Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) says Twitter has produced $1 million in revenue over the past year and a half through sale alerts. People who sign up to follow Dell on Twitter receive messages when discounted products are available the company’s Home Outlet Store. They can click over to purchase the product or forward the information to others." Interestingly Twitter is under much scrutiny because the company has yet to reveal it's business model leaving many to wonder how the service will be monetized? Looks like Dell has been able to do something with the service that the service has yet to do, make sales. Regardless, Twitter is expected to announce it's plan for how to monetize the service in 2009.

Where's Willy?

How geeky is this? I was trying to decide between a number of topic ideas that I have been bouncing around when a new one came to me, straight out of the bank machine. April is tax time here, and since I was expecting a return I e-filed early. Today I was in the city and on a whim decided to check my account at the ATM to see if the deposit had been made yet. Since it had (cha-ching) I withdrew a few dollars before heading to the big box electronics shop.

One of the bills had hand writing on it which caught my eye. Normally I would ignore such markings but this one jumped out at me. Neatly printed on the bill was "Follow my journey - online! www.whereswilly.com"URL and the bill's serial number was circled. With an like that I was a little concerned that the link might take me to a site of questionable content, but curiosity got the better of me.

Much to my joy the site actually allows you to trace the wanderings of your money before it reached your hands and, if you play along, after it's long spent. I've seen similar sites such as http://www.bookcrossing.com/ which is a free book club that allows you to track the travels of books that you've read. The idea is to leave the book in a public place with directions to their site for journaling it's travels. The really geeky part of this story however is what happened when I was putting this post together. Without really thinking much about it, I decided to scan the bill and post the image with the article. My trusty HP Officejet 6210 All-in-One gladly complied but when I tried to save the image to jpeg format, using Paint Shop Pro, I received the following message: "This application does not support the unauthorized processing of banknote images. For more information, select the information button below for Internet-based information on restrictions for copying and distributing banknote images or go to www.rulesforuse.org.".

rulesforuse.org provides guidelines for the use of images of currency and links to the appropriate governing bodies, according to where you live. I hope the Bank of Canada will approve of my alterations to the image included herein, in the interest of time I've done my best to render the image unusable for nefarious purposes... though I haven't requested the appropriate permission, yet!