Beautiful Pair: Biometrics and Magstripes
Each Wednesday, PYMNTS.com profiles a different top executive from the leading companies in payment innovation.
Name: Jonathan Ramaci
Title: CEO & Founder
Company: iCache
What I’m working on now...Bringing the iCache Digital Wallet and iCache Ecosystem to the Worldwide Market
My crowning achievement is...Professionally, bringing together a wonderful team of people to bring an amazing product to market.
Education…Educated at The Citadel and MIT (and daily by reading PYMNTS.com)!
When I’m not working, I like to…Spend time with family, travel and enjoy great wines and cooking.
My favorite payment factor is…Seashells, closely followed by anything that is in an analog form and can be digitized onto the iCache Digital Wallet!
I think the next big thing in payments is…The consolidation, protection and digitization of the connected wallet. At iCache, we have made this form factor and ecosystem a reality.
Cash is…an exchange of value that will always be around – whether in the form of seashells, coins, paper or bits.
Checks are…paper representing paper – expensive to process and makes declining sense as means of value exchange in a digital age.
NFC is…built around a technology looking for a problem to solve rather than providing a solution to an existing problem.
Consumers still do not understand the value (if there is one). Merchants have not seen enough value to buy the terminals. And the real proof - myspell checker does not even know about "contactless" and continually flags it as an error!
EMV is…is an interesting platform and a step in the right direction. I am not sure where it is headed but do feel it has meaning. Certainly something to watch evolve (hence its inclusion in the iCache Digital Wallet).
P2P is…be an exchange of bits representing value.
My mentor is/ I’ve learned from my mentor… I have been fortunate to learn many things directly & indirectly from many people. It would be difficult to pick one over another and is a continual process.
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Comments
I am glad the EMV question was towards the end of the interview :-)
To elaborate a bit more, I do find the platform interesting in that it combines a level of intelligence in the card combined with a secret supposedly only known to the card owner. Albeit a less than perfect system leaving room for improvement, I do think it there are things to learn from EMV. EMV expresses the market need for an intelligent payment method that is bound to the consumer using the chosen payment method.
Has EMV reached all of these goals in the best way possible? My answer to that is "no" - pin numbers are weak and not all terminals are capable of EMV2. The answer, in my opinion, is the iCache Digital Wallet in which we bind the consumer to the card (or chip or barcode or contacless chip) they are producing for real time use via their own biometrics. A deeper dive will reveal that we bring great additional value to issuers, networks, merchants & consumers all with out changing anything at point-of-sale. I'd enjoy discussing this more with you (please feel free to email me) and thank you for your comments! Best, Jon
Posted by Jonathan Ramaci, 09/07/2010 9:36am (2 years ago)
For more info on iCache or for direct inquiries, please feel free to email me at jramaci@icache.com. Thank you - Jon Ramaci, iCache
Posted by Jonathan Ramaci, 09/07/2010 8:39am (2 years ago)
You know it's time to stop reading when you get to a comment like "EMV is an interesting platform and a step in the right direction". I have stopped reading!
Posted by David Griffiths, 07/07/2010 7:33pm (2 years ago)
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