Might Twitter move into financial services? $44 billion is an awful lot of money to pay for a struggling social media platform unless there’s a much grander vision motivating the decision. Elon Musk was one of the original founders of PayPal and understands the potential of payments to monetize the Twitter platform beyond just advertising revenue. He has hinted at movement in this direction in recent internal meetings. Some speculate that the vision may be grander, extending to offering deposit products or even creating a super app. There would be significant challenges with making this happen though – particularly as it relates to establishing consumer trust in light of recent events and addressing likely regulatory concerns.
Digital transformation is never done — people need to get used to always being in a state of change. Companies must be comfortable managing multiple projects at the same time and implementing them with agility and with a diversity of thought. Transformation is not about adding technology here and there or tweaking the organizational structure. It’s about creating a new operating model where people, processes, and technology are consistently tuned to deliver value.
Customer engagement doesn’t mean peppering people with promotions. This type of engagement is focused on the company’s needs and is fundamentally transactional and opportunistic. “True” customer engagement helps create win-win solutions that fulfill both customer needs and the needs of the company. Creating meaningful, customer-centric engagement results in improved satisfaction and retention.
PayPal is looking for new ways to increase customer use of its digital wallet. They are testing a teen account for users of its Venmo peer-to-peer payment service, and are working with Apple to create a tap-to-pay function with iPhones. It is also introducing a new PayPal rewards program offering users cash back to help drive wallet adoption. The company trying to reduce high churn rates which have caused it to miss its goals for the year for revenue and net new user account acquisition.
ATMs remain important even as cash usage continues to decline. A recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that 20% of all payments were conducted using cash – a statistic too hard to ignore and one that points to a continuing use case for ATMs. But responsibility for deployment, maintenance, and support for the equipment can be outsourced through ATM-as-a-Service (ATMaaS) agreements. Moving these responsibilities to the vendor can significantly reduce the menial tasks that can be commonplace with in-house ATM management, while also keeping equipment up-to-date and mitigating the risk of the channel falling into disarray if the institution loses a key employee.
