Patrick de Laive

A while ago I wrote a post about why Vodafone should buy ABN AMRO
It says:

How do you pay for a Mars-bar, or your coffee at Star Bucks, your new fake la fraise tees from the market, the parking lot, etc. ? Well, in most cases you’d probably answer or a. cash or b. credit card. But what to think of C. Your Mobile phone!

The news got out yesterday that Rabobank just announced to launch a new Telecom company that enables payments by telephone just as easy as with your ATM- or Credit card.

I guess it was a pretty good guess :

It would make sense if your telephone bill is incorporated into your bank account. The costs of mobile payment would decrease to virtually zero and before you know it you’re paying everywhere with your Nokia F2.0. One way this could be done is if a Bank starts his own Telco (or vica versa), another way is if a Bank and a Telco merger (or one acquires the other).

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You know the drill: its late, you wanna go home, but you’re hoping you’re girlfriend is still awake (or has a loud 24 ringtone), so you decide to take the chance and call her (at 4 am).

‘toooooot, tooooooot, toooooot, click: ‘this is the voicemail of’ (when you heard : ‘this’, you wanted to hang up, but because you knew you would hear your girlfriends voice in a few seconds, you didn’t) ‘Carolinaaaah’ (WoW!). Leave a message after the beep. …. BEEEP.

–And then comes the hard part, you’re still thinking of that sweet voice of Caro and wandering on the same time why she’s not taking the phone–

Uuuh hola mi amor, uuuuuuuuuhhh quiero verte… uuuuhh, llamame manana! Beso.

I hate voicemail!

A photomail (see picture) would tell a lot more (I love you! but clearly I have troubles with expressing that to you right now) .

Yesterday I was in the Apple store (it was like one big candy jar with very expensive candy in it) and someone asked me what the difference is between a Mac and a Win@#$%^&*dows PC (I get that question all the time, as I’m a big Mac fan and I’ve not been seen in public without my powerbook).

So I started, apart of course from the eye pleasing design, about the easy and intuitive way the Mac operating system works and that the word virus isn’t listed in a Mac User’s vocabulary. Then I went on with the Mac this, Mac that story and more of the same, but one way or the other I was not able to get trough and convince this tech dissavvy windows guy. I grabbed the Wired and showed him the ad (expressing the same I was trying to tell), but he was clearly not convinced, noticeable by his answer: “You’re aware of the fact that you’re showing me an AD right?” probably meaning that an ad is not truly objective (he was abso right).

So I felt it was time to improve my Apple pitch. How can I convince anyone of the dominance of a Mac over Windows?

I came up with this new tagline I’ll use as of now, which was inspired by an expression my ex girlfriend used the other day:

Once you go Mac,
You never go back!

P.S. If you have the opportunity to connect me with Apple’s CMO, don’t hesitate (Mr Jobs would do as well)

The stock price of ABN AMRO rose the last days on behalf of rumors that the Bank of America would be interested to buy the Dutch bank. The stock price of ABN is lacking behind in comparison with other European banks and is therefore an interesting ‘cheap’ candidate for other big banks (with a high valuation). Traders are speculating that The Bank of America would be interested in buying ABN.

ABN has a market cap of $53 billion at this moment (Bank of America -$235 billion-).
But does it make any sense? If the Bank of America buys ABN, than they just have a bigger bank, they’ll continuing doing the same things, so little innovation can be expected here.
Everybody knows that in the near future more and more payments will go thru the Internet. Online sales keep rising on an astonishing rate! And of course the money ends up in people’s bank accounts, but the transfer rates are going to the PayPal’s of the future. And even the banks cash cow (stock exchanges) will face large competition in the near future (the rumor goes that the founders of Skype are determined to turn around the financial sector -just as they did with the music industry (Kazaa) and the telecom sector (Skype)). I’m wandering if banks are aware of all this (probably not, the sector is sleeping for years and years already). At least an acquisition of ABN by another bank doesn’t make much sense in this light.

I believe that banks need to innovate if they want keep their position.

Why would Vodafone be interested in ABN? Ask yourself these questions: How do you pay for a Mars-bar, or your coffee at Star Bucks, your new fake la fraise tees from the market, the parking lot, etc. ? Well, in most cases you’d probably answer or a. cash or b. credit card. But what to think of C. Your Mobile phone!

A lot of services can be paid for through your mobile phone bill. If I want to vote (by SMS) for my favorite Holland’s Next Top Model, I’ll receive an SMS with a ‘Thank you for voting’ message in it for which my phone bill will be credited an extra 90 cents (or more). Of this 90 cents almost half goes to the telecom provider! The ‘transaction’ costs of mobile payments are immensely high. The main reason the Telcos will give you is that they take on the financial risk of not paying customers. And to be honest, they are right. The Telco doesn’t know if you’re able (or willing) to pay your bill and they have problems with collecting the money.
So, it would make sense if your telephone bill is incorporated into your bank account. The costs of mobile payment would decrease to virtually zero and before you know it you’re paying everywhere with your Nokia F2.0. One way this could be done is if a Bank starts his own Telco (or vica versa), another way is if a Bank and a Telco merger (or one acquires the other).

Vodafone should consider an aqcuisition of the ABN (or any other banks that they can afford with a worldwide network). There are a lot of good reasons for both parties to join forces (I might dig deeper into this in a future post).
The combination of a bank and a telco (both already having millions of customers) is a very powerfull one, and mind my words…. it is the future.

So, everybody has a MP3 player, right?*
And everybody has a computer with an internet connection, right?**

Imagine you’re a student and you have a class at 9pm after a long night drinking with your friends at the bar followed by chasing that hot girl to finally end up with her, after grabbing a large cappuccino at the nearest just opening up for a new day of business Starbucks (Or for Dutchies; Coffee Company), in your own bed, cuddling and sipping your cold coffee (because when the cappuccino was still hot, you were so too ). Would you like to get up at 8 and rush over to university to attend that always boring marketing management class? Or would you rather stay in bed with the hot girl?…….
Yes I thought so. SKIPP class!

And why would you go? I mean, at 11pm your new MacBook 13 inch downloads automatically the podcast of the marketing management class and you can play it on your iPod Nano 4gb during your workout session, while trying to impress some good looking ladies, later that day (Tip: Never try to impress ladies during workout!). Isn’t that great! The podcasts I mean. That’s what they are doing at the university of Wageningen***!
Wonder how many people will continue to physically follow classes
I see an opportunity for some tech savvy entrepreneurial students here…. College podcasts and vodcasts based on a subscribers fee….

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* That is not true! But at least a large majority of young people in the Western World have one.
** ok, also not true. But all people who can read this do have it.
*** Take my advice on this one: NEVER go to the university of Wageningen! Oh BTW the link is in Dutch, sorry.