I attended the Future of Money conference in SF with some colleagues on the mobile design team. It was only one day long and the attendance wasn’t as large as I expected, but in just listening to speakers and panelists I learned a few things, and they answered some of my lingering questions.
How do millennials think about currency?
- It’s very immediate (I owe someone for beer)
- Settling rent between 4 people should be easy because I’m used easy.
- Student debt monthly cash flow
- I should be able to make payments through touch.
84 million people were born in 1981-2000. We’ll see more money services catering to millennials. Millennials don’t think about currency the way we do. They don’t think twice about sharing considerably private information with third party businesses like Venmo, and they don’t care that a payment they’ve made gets posted to Facebook. It’s like they don’t even understand the concept of privacy because they’ve never really had it.
A-ha moment of the day: OMG I’m a millennial?!?!
What is the future of retirement?
- Main takeaway is that the responsibility has moved to the individual instead of the corporations.- Our goal when creating products and services should be to educate more people about retirement. - Trust in technology, trust in algorithms… (I dunno about that…) - Personal investment services like Acorns, Betterment, WellFund are algorithm-driven and can help you make better investment choices.
How can we educate people about money management?
- Now it is easy to access your financial information.
- Combination of technology and data.
- There is significant behavioral change when a user is shown his financial health as well as graphical information on how much money he is spending.
- Model services like LearnVest, PayPerks.
- Don’t trust brokers all the time. They are salespeople.
- Educate the wives and daughters as statistics show females run the household when it comes to money management.
- When you are graduating to a more complex financial life, seek out personal advisory solutions instead of trying to self-educate.
What is the future of banking?
- 71% would rather go to a dentist than listen to banks.
- 77% would bank with non-finance companies like Paypal, Costco, Square.
- Surveys say people have strong distrust of traditional banks!
- Purchasing power of the U.S. dollar lost 83% of its value since 1970.
- Banking online only is becoming more of a trend.
- Key takeaway is that people are moving away from traditional banks and finding alternatives (i.e. online banking).
What is the future of payments?
- P2P payments continue to thrive, but M2M (machine to machine) payments may be the upcoming trend. Street meter example: Why can’t the car just pay the meter instead of me getting out to pay it?
- Obscuring payments. Example: Uber is a pioneer in obscuring payments. Link your CC once, then you don’t really know what you’ve spent. People are fine with that as they got the service they wanted and payment experience was seamless.
-Payments won’t feel like you’re spending money anymore- it just becomes a part of the experience. - Digital currency is what makes money movement FREE.
What’s up with bitcoin nowadays?
- Money is a stored value.
- Transaction volume is increasing, bitcoin is popularizing (really??).
- The people define what value bitcoin has. In Kenya, airtime minutes is the preferred currency for 7 years!
So many bitcoin companies! Examples:
BitPay = encourages merchants to cash out immediately.
BoostVC = invests in bitcoin startups and incubators.
Analogy:
With Skype, as long as you’re in our network, it will be free. If you call out of the network, we’ll charge you. Same thing with Bitcoin. If you cash out in RMB, there may be fees.
Instacart didn’t work until there was location tracking. It took 15-20 years for it to take off.
Why was WhatsApp successful internationally? It was super easy for older phones like Nokias to download a Java app and start texting for free.
ApplePay requires identity verification. It is far more secure than any CC bc you need individual fingerprint.
Leaders in bitcoin transactions and merchant mining: Paypal, Braintree, Venmo, Coinbase (stores your bitcoins).
Bitcoin is exciting for international transactions. Bitcoin is becoming a service, not a commodity.