#foev

BPAY ran their first 2020 conference last week, and they kindly asked C4tE to participate in the plenary (as we mentioned earlier). Our contribution, which you can find at Scribd, builds on our contribution to Deloittes recent retail breakfast, exploring the ideas from a payments angle.

The nutshell explanation is as follows:

The current retail model is a constructed environment and shopping a learnt experience a response to the creation of mass market products and supply chains.

The model is build on there pillars: customers identifying a need, searching for a solution to the need, and then transacting with a merchant that they may not know or trust. Money – cash at the point of sale – facilitates this, as it enables us to transact with someone we don’t know and may never meet again.

However, a number of trends we saw in FoEV suggest that this model might be breaking down. The mid-market dies, consumers seized control of the customer-merchant relationship, peers replaced brands, value is now defined by the consumer rather than the producer, payments are moving away from the till, and shopping is becoming increasingly impulse driven.

Consequentially the future of payments might not be a slicker PoS experience, as it may involve new trust models that do not push cash – payment at the point of sale – at the centre of the merchant-customer relationship.

Deloitte ran a series of breakfasts recently for the retail community, and they kindly asked C4tE to participate.

Our contribution, which you can find at Scribd, sprang out of our recent report The Future of Exchanging Value: Cryptocurrencies and the trust economy (FoEV) when, during a chance conversation, Robbie (the left-brained person who leads the Spatial team) pointed out that that we were arguing for a new trust architecture in retail.

The nutshell explanation of the idea is:

The current retail model is a constructed environment and shopping a learnt experience. This model is a response to the creation of mass market products and supply chains.

The model is build on there pillars: customers identifying a need, searching for a solution to the need, and then transacting with a merchant that they may not know or trust. Money – cash – facilitates this, as it enables us to transact with someone we don't know and may never meet again.

However, a number of trends we saw in FoEV suggest that this model might be breaking down. The mid-market dies, consumers seized control of the customer-merchant relationship, peers replaced brands, value is now defined by the consumer rather than the producer, payments are moving away from the till, and shopping is becoming increasingly impulse driven.

What will retail look like in a world where need is never fully formed, search is irrelevant, and transactions are seen as distasteful? What is the new trust architecture?

See what you think of the presentation and feel free ping us if you have any thoughts.

The two reports mentioned in the presentation are:

The future of exchanging value: Uncovering new ways of spending

The latest report from the Centre for the Edge is out, Bitcoin, Blockchain & distributed ledgers: Caught between promise and reality. This report follows on from the one published in February, The Future of Exchanging Value: Cryptocurrencies and the trust economy (FoEV).

In the FoEV we looked at cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin, however we had to set aside a discussion on the technologies that underpin cryptocurrencies and their broader affect on society, as the report was already quite long.

With Bitcoin, Blockchain & distributed ledgers we pick up where we left off, and take close look at the opportunities and problems created by these technologies, and their regulatory implications.

We didn't want this report to be yet-another explainer, since there's already a lot of those out there, with the ensuing arguments over technology that invariably seem to follow them. So rather than focus on the technology – the solution space – we focus on the potential applications – the problem space, to try and understand not just what is possible, but what is practical. This is resulted in a compact and pragmatic report.