Futurologist David Birch is one of the world’s foremost authorities when it comes to payment predictions. Financial Brand has declared him one of the ten most influential banking experts, and Total Payments magazine considers him the most influential European commentator on the future of payment. He is a consultant of the largest financial organizations for issues of the future of electronic transactions and a regular commentator for BBC Sky. At the Future Tense Conference, to be held on October 2 in Zagreb’s Laubi, Birch will talk about the future of payments.
Futurologist Birch claims that our identity is changing profoundly, just as money, and precisely thanks to technological changes, both movements are converging. As a result of that, everything that we will need in the future for payments is our identity, trapped in the unique record of our online social contacts. Birch predicts that social networks and smartphones are key technologies for the change, and that they will enable the building of an identity infrastructure that can enhance the privacy and security of users. The long-term consequences of these changes are unpredictable, partly because their form depends on how businesses take advantage of business opportunities to provide transaction services, but one foreseeable prediction in this field is that the money will soon be redundant. And in its place, we will see new digital currencies.
Technology, Birch points out, has transformed money from physical objects into immaterial information. With the arrival of smart cards, cell phones and Bitcoin, it has become easier than ever to create new forms of money. It became important to inseparably tie money with our identity. Our card or phone is a security device that can identify us and link the information of our account. The use of cash is already dropping, and will certainly disappear. The latest technology will make smart money, and that will be money reflecting the values of the communities that produced it.
David Birch is coming to the Future Tense with support of Addiko Bank, and on that occasion Mario Žižek, CEO of Addiko Bank d.d. said: “To be better tomorrow, you have to roll up your sleeves today. We all witness that the environment in which we live and work is changing at an unbelievable pace, and will continue to accelerate. An integral part of Addiko Bank’s business is a continuous transformation into a more modern and more innovative organization. I think that the biggest changes in the next couple of years will be exactly in the payment segment.”
It’s interesting that Birch is what you would call an “influencer” who influences other innovators. Among his Twitter followers are Bill Gates and Richard Branson. With all said, Birch is also the founder of the Consult Hyperion, independent consulting firm and author of several books: Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin, Identity is the New Money and Digital Identity Management.
Along with Birch, Future Tense is also bringing food futurologist Morgaine Gaye who will talk about micro and macro trends in nutrition, Gerd Leonhard who will talk about the influence of tech development on the development of humanity, and the futurologist Aric Dromi who will talk about smart cities.
Find more information about the conference at www.futuretense.eu
