TORI Perspectives Summer 17 01

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Issue 7 | Summer 2017

Contents 

Introduction 3 

Introduction from Editor, 

Katie Lawton 

Blockchain. A Bank Killer? 4 

Business Analyst, Oliver Charlton, 

explores Blockchain and its impending 

impact 

C-Suite Chit-Chat 6 

Countrywide CTO, Steve Thomas, 

talks about the ‘Digital Disruption’ 

sweeping through the real estate sector 

Digital Disruption: 

The Winners and Losers 8 

Digital Marketing Consultant, 

Dominic Yacoubian, writes a witty 

article on the movers and shakers past 

and present 

7 Things 10 

We get to know TORI’s new Head of 

Cyber Security Nigel Munden 

PSD2 and Open APIs: 

Banking’s Uber Moment? 12 

Chris Archibald delves into Open 

Banking driven by the upcoming 

PSD2. 

Bring bucket-shaking 

to the 21st Century 14 

Read about the contactless bucketshaking 

trial that we took part in with 

our charity partners, CLIC Sargent. 

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TORI Perspectives is copyright of TORI Global 

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publication may not be reproduced without 

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Issue 7 | Summer 2017 

Welcome back! 

This is Perspectives, our 

regular publication aimed 

at giving you a fresh view 

of enterprise. 

INTRODUCTION 

Welcome to the seventh issue of TORI Global’s 

‘Perspectives’ magazine. Every quarter we 

cover issues and trends in the business world 

with insights and interviews from leading 

professionals in their industry. This time we’re 

focusing on Digital Disruption. 

We begin with a witty article from Business 

Analyst, Oliver Charlton, who has a passion 

for Blockchain. He discusses its origin and the 

implications of its future, particularly in the 

current FinTech arena. 

Next we have an interview with the Chief 

Technology Officer (CTO) of leading estate 

agency group, Countrywide, Steve Thomas. We 

ask him about the impact Digital Disruption is 

having on the property market and how the role 

of CTO has changed. 

Thirdly, Dominic Yacoubian, Digital Marketing 

Consultant, compares businesses that have ridden 

the wave of Digital Disruption and those that 

have drowned in the flood of new technology 

and change. 

Following that we have a light-hearted interview 

where we get up close and personal with our 

new Head of Cyber Security, Nigel Munden. 

Find out his desert island discs and what he 

would be doing if he wasn’t in Cyber Security! 

The last two articles in this issue are all about 

payments. The first being a review by Digital 

expert, Chris Archibald, of PSD2 and Open 

Banking. Can we compare what’s about to 

happen to the payments sector to Uber? And 

finally, TORI helped trial the ‘tap to donate’ 

bucket-shaking initiative by CLIC Sargent in 

collaboration with JustGiving. They are looking 

at how to bring fundraising to the 21st Century 

by introducing contactless donations and we 

wanted to get involved! 

Whether you’re reading this on the tube or in the 

office, we hope you enjoy a little perspective… 

Best Wishes 

Katie Lawton 

Editor 

I would love to hear your thoughts so please contact me with 

any feedback: katie.lawton@toriglobal.com 

3

BLOCKCHAIN – A Bank Killer? 

By Oliver Charlton 

The hype surrounding Blockchain 

has been in full swing for some time 

now, with much clamouring about 

its potential uses. One of the most 

popular statistics to be bandied about 

is that Blockchain could reduce banks’ 

infrastructure costs by between $15- 

20bn a year by 2022 1 . 

An impressive statistic no doubt and not something to be 

sniffed at. But my question is this; is Blockchain a bank 

killer? To clarify, by “banks” I am referring to retail banks as 

opposed to investment banks. But before I venture into the 

nascent world of Blockchain, some context. 

Much has been made by the rise of the FinTech industry, 

particularly here in Britain. It has been acknowledged for 

some time now that the FinTech industry is pinching the 

lunch of the incumbent banks. It has also been noted 

that the banks are beginning to worry about this. A recent 

report from PWC suggests that “83% of the respondents 

from traditional financial institutions believe that part of 

their business is at risk of being lost to standalone FinTech 

companies; it reaches 95% in the case of banks” 2 . 

Areas such as payments, FX transfers and 

Peer to Peer (P2P) lending services have 

been noticeable FinTech fortes so far. 

But until recently the more core banking 

services such as current accounts and 

wealth management have been noticeable 

absentees from the FinTech resume; 

that is until the likes of Atom, Monzo 

and Starling have received full banking 

licences from the UK regulator. 

The well-established banks seem to be responding in 

a number of ways that are not without contradiction. 

At a Brexit debate at the Oxford Union, the MEP David 

Hanan gave an impassioned speech on British business, 

but was alarmed at some of the conduct of the banks. 

He expressed his surprise when beginning his tenure in 

Brussels at the lobbying of banks for more regulation – it 

was only the big banks that had the pockets deep enough 

to pay for the compliance bills 3 . 

“Blockchain sits at 

the confluence of the 

reputation economy 

and technological 

progression.” 

Conversely, there have been murmurings of large banks 

trying to partner with FinTech whippersnappers, although 

there doesn’t appear to have been anything of note yet. 

Technological disruption is not the only thing worrying the 

big banks. It is no secret that after the Financial Crisis the 

reputation of banks took a hammering. By way of concrete 

evidence for this, the Millennial Disruption Index revealed 

that 71% of millennials would rather go to the dentist than 

listen to what their bank has to say! Furthermore, half of 

millennials are counting on tech start-ups to change the 

way banking is done today 4 . 

Those two statistics will certainly not surprise anyone, but 

the global recession of 2008 triggered something more 

unexpected – a new type of economy; the reputation 

economy. 

Companies such as Uber and Airbnb have been the two 

most notable surfers of this reputational wave. Talking to 

an Uber driver recently, he told me that being held at knife 

point in his minicab for the cash he was carrying, triggered 

his move to Uber. But it is not only the cashless element 

of Uber that has been fundamental in its success. The 

bilateral reputation scoring, and the trust that it instils in the 

service, for both Airbnb, Uber and many others, has been 

the hallmark of the reputation economy. 

It is no coincidence that Airbnb recently ‘acquirehired’ 

a Bitcoin wallet company for their expertise in 

Blockchain; the CTO and co-founder 

Nathan Blecharczyk, mused recently 

“The question is whether there’s a way 

to export [a user’s reputation] and allow 

access elsewhere to help other sharing 

economy models to really flourish” 5 . 

Blockchain sits at the confluence of the 

reputation economy and technological 

progression. 

So why should banks be worried? As mentioned earlier, 

the constituent parts of retail banking have been broken 

down and consumed by various FinTech companies – a 

banking buffet if you will. But several items have been out 

of reach. I’d argue that whilst banks may save $15-$20bn 

a year through the use of Blockchain - it is a double edged 

sword. This is because Blockchain gives access to areas of 

banking that have previously been unappetising to FinTech 

companies, due to their heavy regulation. Whilst there is 

no sign that the level of regulation will diminish, Blockchain 

offers a route to market previously unavailable. 

4


Blockchain can allow start-ups to access areas such as 

mortgages, personal and business loans (although this has 

already been disrupted somewhat by the likes of Funding 

Circle, Kick Starter and Crowdcube), current accounts and 

credit cards. The reason for this is partly down to credit 

checks, KYC and AML, all of which can become more 

readily available and cheaper. There are a number of other 

reasons why Blockchain can help the smaller companies 

competing in this space. 

Top of the list is audit and compliance – not the hottest 

of topics – but a rather expensive and time-consuming 

one, that smaller companies would rather not do. Deloitte 

have said that “companies would benefit in many ways: 

standardisation [through Blockchain] would allow auditors 

to verify a large portion of the most important data 

behind the financial statements automatically. The cost 

and time necessary to conduct an audit would decline 

considerably”6. 

Smaller companies 

could also reap the 

benefits of smart 

contracts which would 

help drive automation 

up and costs down. 

“The cost and time 

necessary to conduct 

an audit would 

decline considerably” 

There are already those that have noticed the opening up 

of potential market share through the use of Clockchain. 

For instance, Chris Gledhill who was an innovation 

technologist at Lloyds Bank has started Secco, a 

Blockchain inspired bank which has yet to acquire its 

banking license, but is certainly at the leading edge of this 

new type of banking. 

Theoretically, there is nothing to stop banks using all the 

benefits of Blockchain (and many are already looking 

to exploit the benefits). They could buy their way to 

Blockchain bliss through acquisitions or through building 

internal capability. A couple of issues remain however. 

Firstly, the time that it takes for incumbent banks to figure 

out how (and then implement) the integration between 

Blockchain technology and its existing infrastructure, is 

a window of opportunity for the start-ups to exploit. But 

there is a more esoteric reason for why banks may struggle 

to defend their market share; they will have to be bold. 

This article may have seemed a bit doom and gloom, 

especially if you’re reading it from the viewpoint of 

an incumbent. The coming together of the reputation 

economy, dissatisfaction with traditional banking and trust 

technologies such as Blockchain, are all good news for 

customers. If you are reading from the perspective of an 

incumbent bank, then Steve Jurvetson, partner of VC firm 

Draper, Fisher, Jurvetson has hit the nail on the head: “big 

companies will never do something substantial or worth 

thinking about or worth writing a history book about in their 

core businesses” 7 . Innovation naturally occurs outside of 

the core business and that is precisely where big banks 

will need to focus if they are to be successful in riding the 

Blockchain wave – if not they’re heading for a wipe out! 

WHAT IS BLOCKCHAIN? 

Blockchain is best thought of as a database, the 

contents of which is distributed across a network. 

Blockchain was developed to provide the platform 

for the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, and is a form of 

distributed ledger. 

A distributed ledger is the method by which records 

are distributed across a network, thus meaning the 

entire network has access to the data on the ledger. 

The transparent nature of Blockchain creates a 

‘single version of the truth’ that can be verified by 

everyone on the network. 

The excitement surrounding Blockchain is due to 

the possibilities surrounding the disintermediation, 

security and traceability of units of value (whether 

that be company stocks, diamonds or personal 

information). 

1 The Fintech 2.0 Paper: rebooting financial services – Santander 

Innoventures, Oliver Wyman & Anthemis 

2 Blurred Lines: How FinTech is shaping Financial Services – PWC 

3 EU Debate - Oxford Union. Daniel Hannan MEP, https://www. 

youtube.com/watch?v=tzNj-hH8LkY 

4 The Millennial Disruption Index, http://www. 

millennialdisruptionindex.com/ 

5 Quartz, Airbnb just acquired a team of bitcoin and blockchain 

experts, http://qz.com/657246/airbnb-just-acquired-a-team-ofbitcoin-and-blockchain-experts/ 

6 Deloitte, Blockchain Technology: A game breaker for accounting? 

7 Mckinsey & Company, Inside the Mind of a Venture Capitalist, 

http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/insidethe-mind-of-a-venture-capitalist 

5

6


C-Suite Chit-Chat 

with Steve Thomas 

A quick Q&A with Steve Thomas, 

Chief Technology Officer of Countrywide. 

1 4 

What are the biggest changes 

that the property industry 

has seen in the last few years? 

The biggest changes are around, and 

I’m going to use a common term 

here, ‘Digital Disruption’ as well as 

new entrants coming into the market 

in terms of offering quick speedto-market 

solutions. Over the next 

few months we’re going to see the 

digitisation of Lettings – that’s an area 

that historically has been pretty much 

all face-to-face so across the industry 

we’re going to see some changes. 

2 

How is Countrywide 

adapting to these changes? 

We’re adapting to the changes by 

looking at smaller tech companies that 

we can plug and supplement into our 

larger line of business. The days are 

gone where you pick a solution and 

it does the full end-to-end breadth of 

your offering. We also need the ability 

to plug in things quickly. 

3 

Where do you think 

Countrywide should look 

to innovate next in order to 

retain market share? 

We need to innovate across the value 

chain of the customer. Not necessarily 

picking out one area, but looking 

at the value proposition. Customers 

start with wanting to buy a home, it’s 

then serving them with a mortgage 

that gives the customer choice over 

whether they want to do it face-toface, 

over the phone or digitally. 

How are you managing the 

cultural aspects of Digital 

Disruption? 

That’s a difficult one. It’s about 

behaviours isn’t it? We are a business 

that’s been historically run on people 

and relationships. You’re moving 

more, or looking to move more, to an 

online channel. It’s really an ongoing 

piece to look at how you reward and 

keep your talent. We put a lot into 

our people and they are key to any 

success. 

5 

How do the incumbents of 

the property sector (such as 

Countrywide) stay one step 

ahead of disruptors? 

Disruptors won’t necessarily have the 

breadth and depth of experience to 

run it end-to-end. You need to know 

what customers want. We’ve been 

doing this for years, we understand 

the market, we’re credible. What it’s 

really about is trying to match people 

to property and property to people, 

and it’s making that simpler and an 

easier journey. 

6 

How do you think the role 

of CTO has changed over the 

last 5 years? 

I think it’s broadened heavily. We’ve 

got to have the ability to advise on 

technology and the business. Looking 

at the digital journey or the analogue 

journey, if you want to call it that, 

or the hybrid journey. We need to 

have the technology to underpin 

the value propositions. Days have 

gone where we can say that we’re 

just going to give you the capability 

and the enablement of technology. 

It’s ensuring that you can actually 

showcase or prove that the technology 

is working for those user journeys and 

business processes. 

7 

Has the role become about 

engaging with people? 

The role has always been very 

human. In terms of selling or buying 

internally and your relationships. 

Whichever department you’re in 

in a company, you’re a salesman 

internally. If you go back 5 years, the 

role of CTO was, dare I say this but, 

associated with cables and wires. Now 

it’s connecting technology to the 

Target Operating Model. How you’re 

going to win business and how you’re 

going to serve your customer better. 

8 

What new challenges are 

CTOs facing today? 

It’s probably keeping abreast with it 

all. The markets and technology are 

constantly changing. There’s always 

new technology coming out! It’s 

getting the time and the bandwidth to 

be sure you’re aware of the latest and 

greatest. You want to have that key 

differentiator, that competitive edge. 

It’s not just about keeping things 

running. 

Thank you for talking to Perspectives, 

Steve! 

7

Digital Disruption is nothing new, but 

at the same time it is not going away and 

continues its drive at growing pace from 

channel to channel, catching snoozing 

incumbents unawares as it tears along. 

Digital Disruption 

– the Winners and Losers 

It all started with the dot-com bubble which, whilst 

promptly burst, echoed in a new era of consumer 

behaviour that quickly disrupted traditional business with 

a ferocity never seen before. It forever changed how 

information was exchanged, the very meaning of social 

interaction, how goods and services traded and even 

the core of how businesses had to act. With the birth of 

consumer sharing; 90% of consumers say their buying 

decisions are influenced by reviews and 86% say negative 

reviews influence their purchase choices. 

Who remembers Encyclopædia 

Britannica? First published in 1768 it 

was an early victim of disruption when 

Microsoft started giving away Encarta 

free in the late 1990’s. And since the 

internet provides such a rich resource of 

information (not necessarily accurate of 

course), the printed version finally came to 

an end in 2010, after 142 years, and now 

exists solely as digital content. 

And since, Digital Disruption has swept from sector 

to sector like a sci-fi film nanite virus, collapsing very 

established household brands in its wake as if they never 

saw it coming. We have seen significant disruption across 

retail, travel, finance, media and entertainment seeing 

brands such as Alders, the third-largest department store 

in the UK founded in 1862, Woolworths, founded 1909 

which had more than 800 stores, and Virgin Megastores 

all disappear from the high street. 

8 

Digital Disruption has 

swept from sector to sector 

like a sci-fi film nanite 

virus, collapsing very 

established household 

brands in its wake as if 

they never saw it coming. 

FinTech firms have allowed us to do our banking online 

using a mobile app instead of taking up our free time 

going to a physical bank branch. They are challenging 

banks and other types of regulated financial institutions 

across a broad range of products and services and in 

order to stay competitive and relevant, Financial Services 

providers need to harness the spirit, skills and dynamism 

of FinTech or at least collaborate with them! 

RegTech is providing more automated advice, for example 

with the use of software robots called “chat-bots” that 

can operate faster and at a fraction of 

the cost of a human. For example, Credit 

Suisse announced in May 2017 that it had 

deployed 20 robots that take queries from 

employees related to compliance. 

Now we are seeing PropTech significantly 

disrupting the property and property 

lending sector. New platforms for buying, 

selling and renting houses cut out the 

middleman offering significant savings 

as well as offering the buyers and sellers the ability to 

control to process transparently in much the same way 

as the aforementioned FinTech start-ups. In exactly the 

same way as FinTech and retail disruption before it, this 

rising tide of PropTech start-ups represents a fundamental 

challenge to the more traditional retail estate agency 

businesses. Some well-known high street brands, 

established for more than 30 years have been overtaken 

by PropTech start-ups less than 3 years old. And in 

some extreme cases, not just overtaken but seeing these 

start-ups now almost 3 times the incumbent’s value! Take


Purplebricks, launched 2014, less than a year floated and 

now, less than 3 years down the road valued at £560m. 

So how does this happen? Firstly, let’s get some context. 

Over the last 30 years’ business start-ups have seen a 

success rate of around 10%, 1 in 10 business start-ups 

succeed, 9 fail. With tech start-ups this is exactly the 

same, for every successful tech start-up out there, there 

are 9 defunct. The difference is generally scale. Tech startups 

that do succeed tend to grow at a massive rate, but 

they are not always the innovators we might think. Many 

are 2nd or 3rd iterations of previous attempts that failed. 

One thing that definitely came from the 2008 Financial 

Crisis was wiser consumers far keener on saving money, 

hence the boom of discount sites in 2010. So when 

someone wants to sell their home and is faced with the 

choice of the traditional estate agent, who are famously 

not trusted and wanting to charge 3% of the sale fee 

(which with the current average property cost in the 

UK being £235k would cost them £7k) OR a self-serve 

platform for around £800, some of which don’t even 

charge if there is no sale, I think there would be little 

uncertainty of which route to go. 

And on the whole, those businesses that have survived 

the disruption have come out of intensive care completely 

changed from the bottom up and hardly resembling their 

former selves. They have adapted quickly and completely 

reinvented themselves. Debenhams for instance is looking 

to close 10 stores and is working to make its physical 

stores “more digital” by placing a greater emphasis on 

leisure experiences befitting an era of “social shopping.” 

Sergio Bucher, who joined the company from Amazon in 

October 2016, announced the “Debenhams Redesigned” 

and said “shopping with Debenhams should be effortless, 

reliable and fun whichever channel our customers use. We 

will be a destination for ‘social shopping’ with mobile being 

the unifying platform for interacting with our customers”. 

If we look at the great successes of disruption, such 

as Apple or Amazon, never have these businesses sat 

back and waited for trends to emerge. Instead they 

continuously evolve and innovate, seizing any opportunity 

to continue to disrupt. 

So why have so many fantastic (as they were) businesses 

and household brands failed and why do so many 

incumbents continue to fail to spot or react to disruption? 

For many it is the good old fashioned head in the sand, 

others the boiling frog scenario where they are all too 

focused on today, managing the status quo no one is 

looking at what is happening around them. For many it is 

more complex, they may be tied to legacy systems which 

might take years to replace. The reality is, there are many 

reasons why companies fail to react, but there really is no 

excuse for failing to address disruption, there are always 

solutions. 

Digital Disruption is, after all, not a negative thing. The 

transformation it brings enriches our lives and creates 

ever better experiences for all of us. It is only negative 

for companies that choose to ignore it. So, the simple 

solution is don’t ignore disruption, it is happening and will 

continue to do so. Embrace it, indulge it and use it as a 

competitive advantage. 

9

7 Things 

with Nigel Munden 

Nigel is our new Head of Cyber Security 

at TORI, having previously worked at 

Intel. We asked him a few questions to 

get to know him a little better… 

Desert island discs – what 3 records would 

you take with you? 

That’s a tricky one because I have quite an eclectic 

taste in music. Firstly I would probably choose Blur, 

then Ed Sheeran, and the 3rd would be John Mayer. 

Quite a different mix. 

If you could meet anyone living or dead, 

who would you meet? 

I would like to meet Ayrton Senna for what he did 

for Formula 1 and dying so young. However the 

person who probably interests me the most is Bill 

Gates. He has an interesting balance between what 

he did in the 70s and 80s to establish Microsoft, 

making his billions, but most interestingly, what he 

is doing with his wife – the foundation. The amount 

they are investing and how much impact they are 

having around the world. I would love to know how 

they make selections of where to invest. 

If time and money weren’t factors, what 

skill would you like to master? 

Guitarist……my desert island discs all had a strong 

guitar element to them and I’ve always wanted to 

be able to play the guitar. 

10


What are your favourite 3 cities you have 

visited? 

I would probably choose London as my favourite 

city. I’ve been lucky enough to have lived in quite a 

few places, however I’ve never lived in London even 

though my daughters live there now and I do things 

there a lot. It’s such a multicultural city with so many 

exciting things going on. The breadth of what you 

can do in London is just about wider than anywhere 

else in the world. 

The second city I would choose would be San 

Francisco. We lived quite close to it while living in 

the States and I loved the cool little suburbs. It’s a 

really laid-back, friendly city. 

The third is Paris. We used to live on the outskirts of 

Paris and once again it’s an interesting city – lots of 

museums, good sports venues but also the food! 

If you could time travel, where would you 

go and why? 

a. 100 years into the future - I think it would 

be fascinating to see just how things have changed, 

how we travel, how we communicate and most of 

all how we solved Cyber Security 

If you weren’t doing what you do now, 

what career would you love to have? 

I’d probably be an Architect. It’s something I’ve 

been interested in from a young age actually. When 

playing with Lego I used to make freaky looking 

buildings. These days I’m interested in the work 

of Norman Foster and Anish Kapoor. I’ve always 

watched Grand Designs and have aspirations of 

building my own house. 

Why did you join TORI? 

There’s a big opportunity at TORI. Cyber Security 

is everywhere, in everyone’s lives and impacts us 

at all different levels. I want to work in a way that 

has a holistic view of Cyber Security that is best for 

the customer rather than working on products and 

solutions and how they can be implemented. TORI 

offers that space. 

11

Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs, are 

nothing new - they used to drive your mouse or 

keyboard. But over time, they’ve moved beyond the 

domain of hardware engineers and into the realm of 

software developers. In fact, they represent the core 

business of some of the largest companies in the 

world. Salesforce, Facebook, Amazon… the list goes 

on. Where once it was de rigueur for businesses to 

have a website and later a mobile app, now it’s APIs 

that set the standard of the new digital economy. 

PSD2 and Open APIs: 

Banking’s Uber Moment? 

So, where’s banking in all of this? 

Coming into effect in January 2018, Payments Service 

Directive 2, or PSD2, is a data and technology-driven 

initiative which aims to enable the consumption of 

banking services from a broader range of banking 

service providers… anytime, anywhere. It will increase 

competition, innovation and transparency across the 

European payments market (while simultaneously 

enhancing the security of internet payments and account 

access). And while PSD2 doesn’t prescribe the use of 

APIs, conventional wisdom has it that APIs are the most 

effective way of delivering Open Banking. 

Once implemented, PSD2 has the potential to change 

the face of payments in the way Airbnb revolutionised the 

hospitality sector. Most intriguing are the ideas we haven’t 

thought of yet. A few of the features we should expect: 

• More choice of service provider and product. 

Expect to see some new entrants to the payments 

landscape that have never before been regarded as 

banks. The large tech and social media companies are 

the obvious candidates; free from the encumbrances of 

traditional players, they will bring the innovation that has 

become their hallmark. 

• Greater customisation of products. Subject to 

customer consent, Open Banking will open-up access 

to more customer data than ever before; spending 

habits, travel patterns, social networks… personal data 

that is not the traditional preserve of banking will be up 

for grabs. And with this proliferation of data, banks will 

be able to offer customers more tailored products, at 

more specific times. 

• Permissioned control of access to customer data. 

We’ve become accustomed to accepting cookies 

on websites and clicking ‘OK’ to the user licencing 

agreements on operating systems, social networks and 

any mobile app that wants to access location services. 

Instinctively, we are more cautious with sharing personal 

financial data. Yet the social network way of handling 

consent is coming to banking… 

So, should we expect a sudden and dramatic 

transformation of payments services from January 

next year? While it’s possible that one or two market 

participants (not just banks now; this is a post-PSD world 

after all!) will make a bold start, most people agree that the 

impact on day-to-day payments across the Eurozone will 

be more gradual. For starters, the changes will most likely 

be local to different member states, rather than through a 

single, dominant, pan-European solution. 

12


In that sense, you can expect varying degrees of adoption 

based on respective countries’ digital maturity and 

localised innovation. PSD2 also lends itself to a phased 

roll-out; account information provision is likely to come 

before payments services. And then there’s the planned 

introduction of strong customer authentication - this won’t 

go-live for another year at least (January 2019). Most 

commentators agree that the tipping point will be the entry 

of a large social network as a Third Party Provider (TPP). 

When you start receiving your account information through 

Facebook and paying merchants through WhatsApp, that 

moment probably will have arrived… 

Coinciding with the implementation of the General 

Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), PSD2 presents an 

ideal opportunity for payments providers to balance 

data access with data control… optimising sharing 

and protection. How can they do this? Well, do you 

remember that social network-esque agreement to 

enhanced banking services? At the same time, you could 

specify a right to be forgotten after a certain amount of 

time, or inactivity. Similarly, consent could be subject to 

constraints, like transaction size or value, cross-border 

payments or credit worthiness. 

So, what are the barriers? As with all financial 

transactions, trust remains vital. Twinning payments 

services with Amazon’s Alexa voice service might offer 

an appealing new channel, but if the APIs that interact 

with back-end banking services are insecure, unreliable 

or unstable, customer trust will be undermined, perhaps 

fatally. A successful move to Open Banking will need highperforming, 

high availability and permissioned solutions 

that comply with data-related legislation. 

Through APIs, Open Banking allows businesses to open 

their digital doors to anyone with a good idea. But in 

the context of banking, they also present some serious 

integration challenges. That new payments API still has 

to work with core banking systems (amongst others) to 

provide the very data upon which account information and 

payments are reliant. 

Uber brought disruption to the taxi business. PSD2 and 

Open Banking can revolutionise the payments experience, 

but it’s unlikely to be through a single banking service 

provider; incumbent or not. 

13

BRINGING 

BUCKET 

SHAKING 

TO THE 

21st 

CENTURY 

TORI has been supporting CLIC Sargent, 

the UK’s leading cancer support charity for 

children and young people, for a year now. 

We jumped at the opportunity to be able to 

test out new fundraising technology that 

could help boost donations significantly. 

CLIC Sargent teamed up with JustGiving, and other 

charities, to pilot a live TapDonate prototype. This is a 

contactless bucket that enables people to make a donation 

with a simple tap of their debit card or mobile phone, using 

Apple Pay. 

At the beginning of summer, TORI volunteers took 

part in the trial for CLIC Sargent by testing this exciting 

technology at Baker Street tube station in London, and 

encouraging commuters to tap to donate. 

Sarah Colberg, Lead Account Manager, CLIC Sargent, said: 

“Our nurses and social care teams across the UK fight tirelessly for 

children and young people with cancer, and support whole families 

through the hardest of times.” 

“But we can’t do this without the support of our brilliant 

fundraisers.” 

“We’re excited to be taking part in the JustGiving trial and so 

grateful to the TORI volunteers for donating their time to help us 

test out these new contactless buckets.” 

14


Jonathan Waddingham, Senior Product Manager from 

JustGiving, said: 

“People are increasingly opting for card payments, rather than 

carrying cash, and so we want to create an app that will enable 

supporters to give in the way that suits them. In doing so, JustGiving 

is creating equal opportunities for charities of all sizes to access new 

types of giving technology so that we can continue to grow the world 

of giving.” 

Following the cashless trials the results will be shared by 

JustGiving with the sector as a whole, and will help to 

provide insight into the future trends of charitable giving. 

CLIC Sargent hopes that the learnings from the trial 

will enable them to remain at the forefront of charitable 

innovation and help to raise vital funds in the fight for 

young lives against cancer. 

Today, 11 more children and young people in the UK 

will hear the devastating news that they have cancer. 

Treatment normally starts immediately, is often given 

many miles from home and can last for up to three 

years. Although survival rates are over 80%, cancer 

remains the single largest cause of death from 

disease in children and young people in the UK. 

15

toriglobal.com

TORI Perspectives Summer 17 01

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