When I transfer money from my bank account to my son’s account at the same financial institution, he can (and generally does) spend the money moments later. If I lose a bet to a friend and have to pay him US$20 in cash, he can spend it right away. Consumers expect money to move from one person to another immediately. But that’s not true in a lot of places in the payments ecosystem.
February 17, 2021
May 26, 2020
Last week, I discussed the grand adventure that air travel has become, and that’s all well and good, but getting somewhere is only part of the challenge. Finding a place to stay is a necessary part of the trip, and we stayed in three different hotels as we meandered from Pittsburgh, PA to Alliance, OH to St. Louis, MO and then back to Charleston, SC.
May 19, 2020
Last weekend, my wife and I flew to Pittsburgh, PA from Charleston, SC to retrieve our daughter from college where she graduated on Saturday (with no ceremony). I’ve been traveling for business at least monthly pretty much my entire professional career. I am a “million miler” on Delta, as is my wife, so both of us have spent a lot of time in the air travel ecosystem. I confess that it was liberating to leave the house and the neighborhood and get back to an airport and onto a plane. I have always enjoyed business travel, or travel of any kind, and I looked forward to the trip.
January 17, 2019
I just returned from the 2019 NRF (National Retail Federation) conference in New York. It’s a gathering of about 38,000 people at the Javits center, and if you’re at all interested in the things that make retail work, it’s where you need to be in January. Every type of business that supports retail is present and in force. Here are some of my observations from my few days in retail land: