The structure of the Verified by Visa (and its Mastercard equivalent, 3D-secure) means that an online seller will not be able to keep my credit card details and re-use them later (for nefarious purposes) as I only provide my password directly to Visa NOT to the seller themselves.

Great, I thought!  Until I noticed that the site that was asking me to setup my password (and I would presumably have to re-enter my password at a later date) did not identify itself in any meaningful way. Check it out for yourself https://www.securesuite.co.uk.  Notice that the ‘site owner’ does not appear in the Firefox/MSIE7 location bar and even if you examine the SSL certificate it seems to be registered to a company called CYOTA Inc. The only mention of ‘Verified by Visa’ is buried in the Organisational Unit entry in the certificate.

Now we can obviously google our way to finding out that CYOTA Inc are owned by RSA who probably provide the systems for Verified by Visa, but really…

The whole process is predicated on the buyer knowing that they are providing their password to Visa and no-one else so I find it incredible that Visa, CYOTA and the issuing banks are not addressing the confusion they are causing.

Worse still they aren’t just confusing the public about Verified by Visa, they are also positively ENCOURAGING user to ignore the warning signs of phishing attacks.

My first thought about a concept of banking follwoing a utility model.  At present we commit to provider for a financial product and service i.e. deposit account, personal loan, mortgage, home insurance.  We commit to this provider based on explicit criteria (lowest interest rate, best cover) and value judgements (trusted brand, customer service).  When we want to swicth between providers we have to go through a world of pain or pay exit fees.

Now if we could give an online agent our criteria and allow it to move our deposits and loans between providers we would have a utility model for money.

The problem is what needs to happen to enable this:

• standardisation of services – not necessarily just one product (like 240 volts of electricity) but at least a way to be able to automatically compare products.  The comparison websites are already moving the industry in this direction.
• low cost of service setup for the providers – I have no idea how much a credit check/score costs a lender, but if this cost is passed on to the customer as a fee, it becomes a form of tie-in.
• better data exchange facilities between customers and providers – if I can’t quickly, easily and automatically setup my direct debits with my current account provider, I am prevented from changing providers.   Again, a tie-in, but this time imposed by the destination provider.
• and, most significantly, a significant provider in this marketplace to introduce financial services on this basis.  Actually the real problem is that it needs more than one provider else there is no choice of provider.

I find the likleyhood of two or more financial service providers who are willing to disrupt the market by moving to this kind of model pretty slim.  Especially as it moves the whole marketplace further from a value-add model to a price driven one.

Crazy thought eh?

My second thought was more grounded.  In this age of tightening purse strings I am wondering why my online bank is not providing me with visualisation tools.  Something that lets me see where my money goes each month and therefore where I could make the most significant belt tightening moves.

Sure I could (and occasionally do) download my statements and import them into a spreadsheet to categorise and analyse my outgoings.  But, surely my bank could save me a lot of trouble by not only allowing me to view my outgoings as graphs and charts.  It could use its understanding (or the aggregated knowledge of all its customers) to automatically categorise my expenditure.  Perhaps visualisations of my outgoings over time would also help me too.  Particularly if they could be compared against the aggregation of other users too.

So how about it banks?  Two options there, one that leads you to compete more on price, the other that adds value to your online services.