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Showing posts from June, 2019

Micro Payments - A revolution in the payments landscape

In all industries, there is a   trend towards personalization . Clients want a product or service that is personalized to their needs and don’t accept anymore to pay for all kinds of whistles and bells, which they never use. The   current pricing model   of many digital companies is a (monthly)   license/subscription model , where you get a pre-defined package of features. Alternatively, a lot of digital companies provide free services, but gain revenues through   advertisement   and   selling (all or not anonymized) user data . The first model provides customers a single choice, between paying nothing (thus getting nothing) and paying a large fee (thus getting everything, but also a lot of unused features). The 2nd model restrains the usability (all kinds of adds popping-up and not enough advertising in the world to make all the Web sites profitable) and comes at the expense of privacy and personal data control. A potential new alternative is to   put the consumer in co

Blockchain - Beyond the hype

The word "blockchain" is   omni-present . Working myself in the financial services industry, I often get questions if particular problems should not be solved by "the" blockchain. This gives the impression as if the blockchain is a   magic solution to any problem , but this article aims to demonstrate that blockchain - although an interesting and promising technology - will mainly accommodate specific problems and still requires considerable technological evolution before being viable at large scale. Blockchain has   complex cryptographic foundations , meaning that only a few persons working for blockchain companies will have a fully detailed understanding of the technology. Currently everyone tries to understand (and talk about) the technology, but once it will become a commodity, the details of the technology will be as hidden as the complex query optimization algorithms in a database. Believing that blockchain will change the world we live in is theref