Technologically, money is a primitive form of memory. Now that we have more sophisticated forms of memory, do we need the intermediary any more?

1. Identity is the New Money
Dave Birch
Global Ambassador,
Consult Hyperion
Wired Money
London, July 2014
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Or, “Money is a hack”
Money talks because
money is a metaphor,
a transfer, a bridge…
Money is a specialist
technology, like
writing
Marshall McLuhan
(1964)

2. Who are Consult Hyperion?
Practical and independent expertise
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Mobile payments
Deep involvement in mobile payment programmes
around the world
Payment schemes
Technical authoring and consultancy on EMV payment
specifications, strategy, training & certification requirements.
TfL Future Ticketing Strategy
Enabling open-loop payments in London
transport
Mobile POS
Enabling card payment acceptance within a new
category of Merchants
.

3. The Big Picture
Actually, Shakespeare was wrong. “It not enriches him”? Seriously?
Who steals my purse
steals trash; ‘tis
something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ‘tis his,
and has been slave to
thousands;
But he that filches
from me my good
name
Robs me of that which
not enriches him,
And makes me poor
indeed.
Othello, Act 3, Scene 3

4. Money is Memory
Game of Stones (early Bitcoin)
(image courtesy of NOAA, October 1971)
Money is
technologically
equivalent to a
primitive version of
memory.
Narayana
Kocherlakota

5. Social Capital
We don’t need no stinkin’ badges
In the world of post-
modernism, it is no
longer clear that any
one identity is ‘real’.
Charles Raab (2004)

6. Financial Capital
Our new superpower (hat tip: Sam Lessin) means that we can do away with the hack of cash. In
time, we may even do away with the hack of money.
It wasn’t actually
illegal to have [cash],
it was just that
nobody ever did
anything legitimate
with it.
William Gibson in
“Count Zero”. Grafton
(London: 1987)

7. Transactions and Economic Avatars
When the transactional costs of social capital become lower than those of
financial capital, it becomes a means of exchange
Economic avatars as
an improvement on
the forgetfulness of
cash
Jaron Lanier (2013)

8. Why Now?
The mobile phone and the social network
if modern society has
always been
supposed to be
individualistic, only
now perhaps is the
individual emerging
as a social force to
be reckoned with
Keith Hart (1999)

9. Peak Cash
A burden on the poor and honest, a relief to the rich and dishonest
see Mazotta & Chakravoti, “Who pays more to use cash?” in J. Payment Strategy & Systems 8(1),
p.94-107 (Spring 2014)
In 50 or maybe even
10 years’ time, we
will still be using
cash but I don't
think we'll have
plastic… If I had
said 10 years ago
that you couldn't
pay with a cheque
at the supermarket,
you wouldn't have
believed me. That is
now the reality, and
we see plastic
cards going the
same way.
Anthony Jenkins
(2008)

10. Payments Weather Map
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11. A Thousand Flowers
A single currency? You’re having a laugh.
Money symbolises the
way in which we
are connected to
strangers as never
before.
Paul Seabright (2005)

12. The IBM Dollar
If you don’t like their money, start your own.
I look forward to a
time when the
successors to Bill
Gates will have put
the successors to
Alan Greenspan out
of business.
Edward de Bono
(1993)

13. Identity is the New Money
This is not a metaphor
The electronic money
world looks much
more like the
neolithic world
economy before the
invention of money
than it looks like the
market as we have
known it in the past
few hundred years
Jack Weatherford

14. A Country without Cash Case Study
Reputation substituted for money, social capital substituted for financial
capital, identity substituted for cash
The “personalised
credit system” could
substitute for cash
because of the local
nature of the
circulation.
Antoin Murphy (1978)

15. Tomorrow’s Transactions:
thought leadership from Consult Hyperion
Read www.chyp.com/media/blog
Listen www.chyp.com/media/podcasts
Visit www.chyp.com
Contact info@chyp.com
Follow @chyppings
Thank You
Consult Hyperion has helped some of the world’s leading organisations to make the
right technical and commercial choices within and around smart, mobile, contactless
transactions, including retail payments, identity management and transit ticketing.
Consult Hyperion is a trusted advisor adding product strategy, technical, regulatory,
compliance and information security expertise into project teams within
organisations considering deploying innovative new payment or identity services.
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In January 2013, David Birch was ranked Europe’s most influential commentator on
emerging payments and in August 2013 Wired magazine named him one of their global
top 15 sources of finance and business information.

16. One more thing…
“Identity is the New Money” (LPP: 24th April 2014)
144pp paperback / ISBN 978-1-907994-12-8
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Birch doesn't claim to have all the answers. What he has
done is produce a bold, forward thinking book that grapples
with weighty issues in a concise and accessible way. Retail
Systems (May 2014).