Interview with VISA Europe

Couple more good sessions this afternoon. First was another keynote featuring an interview with the  CEO and CIO of VISA  Europe.

VISA Europe is a technology company, a payments association, and was sold off by VISA Inc to be a not for profit organisation.  It was an interesting interview, focusing on how important technology is to their business, and how their systems have to be extremely reliable and give extraordinarily high performance. They've built their own platform which is modern and allows them to add new services rapidly.
Seem interesting questions and answers:. 

What about the future of money? Are we moving to a cashless society?  Probably not, but we'll use a lot less cash. Mobile devices are they way we're going to be paying for most things in the future. By the London Olympics, in London payments on taxis, buses everything will be by phone. 

Who's going to win the mobile war, apple, android, someone else?
Don't know, don't need to know, don't care

Have you a contingency plan if a country leaves the euro?
 Yes!

What's going to be the most disruptive technology of the next few years excluding mobile?
It wont be a new technology, but the penetration of an existing one, IP networks. Will enable huge changes in the services you can deliver. The Internet of things  will be very disruptive.

And a wonderful piece of advice to CIOs to finish with. When talking to the Board don't go into detail because you think they're interested. They're not. They don't care. If they cared, they'd be in technology