Author: alo2623

The mobile payment system and a future where physical currency is no longer needed will eventually come. However quick this future may come, it still has a lot of hurls to clear before it can be widely accepted. While the majority of the world is embracing the use of near field communication (NFC) technology, some area’s in the world have embraced it less so and has kept on using long existing payment options like debt cards, credit cards, and physical cash. While this is not that big of a deal, it deals more harm than good. If there is not a strong push in these areas of the world (looking at you America), then the adoption rate and the advancement of technology in this field will be slow. For example, there has been a big push within all industries to adopt cloud based technologies. While it is great to see the industry moving forward, the resistance to change long standing methods reduces the potential of these new technologies. Only with the increase in demand of cashless and cardless payment methods can we advance the current state of financial payment methods to the next level.

Reference:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/techonomy/2014/01/23/cash-is-trash-the-future-of-mobile-payment/2/#5697b22a7d44

Data Analysis Techniques for Fraud Detection such as the process mining software like Celonis or ProM are invaluable tools that can help an analyst find out unusual trends. However, the use of social network diagrams and other tools that look into an employee’s friends and connection is getting close to crossing the line between their personal and professional life. It seems like if an employee or group of employees are being suspected of financial fraud, the first step would be to see if the suspects had left any trails within the financial system that can be used against them. However, sometimes this step could prove to be difficult if the suspect is being careful about their motives. Then alternative methods would need to be done like for example social network diagramming. The problem still lies on whether looking into a person’s social circle would be enough proof to incriminate them or even give enough reason to conduct a deeper investigation. There could be cases where false positives can appear and that would lead the company down a path that would leave them open to a counter suit.

Reference:

https://whitecollarhackingcontest.wordpress.com/2015/05/10/data-analysis-techniques-for-fraud-detection/

 

One of the most basic and often used systems to reduce and detect financial fraud is by using a system of checks and balances. While this is great, the one problem with a system of checks and balances is that some companies never follow it. Purchase requisitions, payroll, and other tasks that require authorization all fall onto the shoulders of a single or a couple people in most companies. The majority of businesses are usually small and so most of the time the person or people in the human resources department end up perform multiple duties. This type of process counteracts the basic principles and rules that a check and balance system would put into place. Too much power is placed into the hands of a single or couple individual and from there they will be able to manipulate and cover up the data that would incriminate them. So is there a way to prevent fraud from happening in situations like this? The best way is to make sure that the upper management team works closely with the people doing these tasks. It is a hard balancing act since you do not want to make them feel that they are not trusted.

Reference: http://www.abfjournal.com/articles/minimizing-fraud-checks-balances-vigilance-go-a-long-way/

We have had a lot of discussions about how we would go about detecting fraud within a financial information system, however we have not really touched on the subject of fraud prevention. There are many ways to prevent fraud from happening, but I think there is one preventive step that a lot of people forget to take. Most companies never mention to their employee’s that steps have been taken to prevent and detect fraudulent activities. Some companies might mention it once in a while or just to new hires during their orientation. This is not the way companies should approach fraud prevention. Companies need to make sure that their employee’s know that all transactions are being constantly monitored no matter how big or small they are. For example, a way that companies can bring this message across is to make sure that there are through checks and balances within the transaction process. If each transaction needs the approval or checks of multiple people across various departments then getting a fraudulent transaction through the system will be tougher and can be more easily caught.

Reference: http://www.corporatecomplianceinsights.com/7-steps-preventing-detecting-fraud/

The United States has been falling behind the rest of the world, especially Asia in the area of mobile payment technology. The main reason that I believe that the United States is so behind is because every company and retailer wishes to make their own mobile payment application. While some retailers have succeeded better than others, the main issue I see is that because everyone wants their own application, it reduces the effectiveness of mobile payment applications as a whole. By having their own individual application, each retailer will always want to support their own application, however because of this, other generalized applications like Apple Pay and Android Pay are supported less and the growth of the mobile payment application is stunted. Like the saying go, “divided we fall, united we stand”. For example, in China, WeChat has a digital wallet service where uses can pay for goods and services and also sent money to other people on their contacts list. In the United States this would be a total of three or more applications instead of just one.

 

Reference: https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/24/target-will-launch-its-own-mobile-payments-system-this-year/

As technology continues to advance, companies look into theses advancements to see what they can use to improve their products and services. SAP is no different in this regard, they have begun looking into artificial intelligence and machine learning in order to improve their products and services. This however is not the main point that has caught my interest within the article, the thing that has caught my interest is that SAP is looking to use the research in AI and machine learning to improve their cloud based services. By leveraging this new technology for their cloud services they are able to provide information on which vendor is the best overall within their system. However, by adding in AI and machine learning into their cloud product they had a need to shift to a quarterly update schedule of their products. By shifting to a quarterly schedule they are able to tweak the algorithms in their system to better reflect the needs of the customers. Now this is an interesting shift within their business model where traditionally their on-site products would only get updated annually. From what I can see, SAP’s customers that are using the on-site version of their software may want to have this new technology as part of their systems but it still remains to be seen if SAP will be willing to bring it to them with the large development cycle that is needed in order to make this function mature enough.

Reference: https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/09/sap-brings-ai-and-integrated-analytics-in-latest-cloud-release/

Greenlight is a startup company in Atlanta, Georgia that is trying to solve a problem that has plagued parents around the world. How to give money to your children to use without them losing it or using it to buy things that they should not be buying. Greenlight’s solution is to use a prepaid card that can alert parents to their children’s purchases and that can be reloaded with money by the parents all from an application on their smart phone. This idea from Greenlight seems very promising with all of the built in features that they have. One of the most interesting features is that Greenlight is able to allow parents to specify which stores or websites their children can shop at and how much they can spend there. This to me is the single most important selling point of this service. Being able to make sure that your children do not spend the money they are given on anything illegal or items that the parents would not want them to purchase is definitely a great selling point.

Reference: https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/03/greenlight-is-a-debit-card-for-kids-that-parents-manage-from-their-phones/

The upcoming Practice Exercise for procurement was quite difficult for me. Besides not knowing how to use SAP at all, the instructions listed in the assignment were not that clear and took a bit of time to figure out what it was asking me to do exactly and how to do it. One of the websites that helped me get through one of the parts in the assignment was tutorialspoint. Below is a link to their Purchase and Requisition section.

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/sap_mm/sap_mm_purchase_requisition.htm

It has a great section on how to create purchase requisitions and purchase orders from purchase requisitions. One of the best parts is that the instructions include clear screenshots of the of each step. One of the issues that I had was that I could not figure out what my purchase order and document number were. From these screenshots I was able to get an idea of where this information was located. The only thing that I wish tutorialspoint did better was to have more comprehensive tutorials. It was quite difficult to figure out the next few parts in the assignment and I could not find the tutorials for them on tutorialspoint.

Source: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/sap_mm/sap_mm_purchase_requisition.htm

Blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin, has been picked as one of the next technologies that would change the financial sector. Experts have said that in order for it to be used, it would need to be done in phases. I agree that in order for blockchain to become integrated into financial systems, it needs to be integrated slowly. The financial systems have been in place for decades and if blockchain were to change the way the system works too fast, the repercussions would be too great. For example if blockchain was integrated into the system as fast as possible, it would cause a high interest in the technology which would cause an increase in research and development. Now this might not seem that bad, but if the research and development of the technology were to outpace the integration and updating of the financial systems in use then problems would occur in communication and data transfer. Slow and steady is the way to go and it would allow the integration of blockchain into non-essential systems while testing and debug any issues that may appear along the way.

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2017/01/20/the-internet-blockchain-and-the-evolution-of-foundational-innovations/

The article, “Verifone, FIS and Modo are creating a new way for consumers to pay with loyalty points” by TechCrunch talks about how their new system will allow customers to pay for products and services with their loyalty points at locations that offer them. While this is a great way to use an existing service in a new way, I do not believe that it will be that wildly adopted. First of all, the pay with your loyalty software application has to be enabled by the merchant. Some merchants might not enable it based off of the belief that it is too much trouble. Another issue is that in order for the merchants to use this software application, they will need to have a specific Verifone credit card terminal. Hopefully there are a lot of terminals that can use this application because purchasing a new terminal just for this application while the old terminals are still working will be a very big roadblock. The idea is great, but until a more detailed plan is given, I cannot see this service being used by merchants and customers.

Verifone, FIS and Modo are creating a new way for consumers to pay with loyalty points