Cash HAS a future, as it seems. Interesting research by Pymts.com

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Source: Cash Product Office

Source: Cash Product Office

Traveling the world I have seen that what many predict – the cash-less society – feels like it is very, very far away. A prime example for me is Sweden and the discussion that they possibly want to get rid of cash altogether within short. Not going to happen. When you are outside the bigger cities, hardly any small store likes you to pay by card. Mobile wallets are not to be found. It is the culture to have little markets and community cafés and when you try to pay your coffee and cinnamon bun with anything but cash they tell you where the next ATM is (in such cases usually some 30km away).

The more interesting I found this article by Pymnts.com, titled „With Millennials Picking Cash Over Cards, Cash Gains Steam“. Their research shows that while one would expect that older folks would use more cash, the exact opposite is the case. Worth mentioning is that the cash seems to be used mostly for small transactions while bigger ones are paid with cards – to keep the amount of change in your pocket in check. All this makes much sense to me – great read.

Great Summary by ValueWalk: The Stripe Ecosystem In One Giant Visualization

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valuewalkSometimes it is hard to get to a core of a phenomenon – and then it is good that someone spends some time thinking it through and putting it into simple terms. Now, ValueWalk has done just that with the Stripe-Phenomenon. I believe reading this is time well spent. You find the article here.

This is the way: Luxembourg gives Innovation easy access to Money

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One thing I never quite managed to wrap my head around is the way financing for start-ups works. Well, yeah – I understand how it works and why it works like that. But fact is: A start-up and it´s visionary leaders, taking personal risks to move it forward, should focus on their business entirely and push it towards success. Instead they struggle to get to the next finance round and pay for the essentials.

Markets which make it easy to access funds to grow a business, from my point of view, got it right. It should be easy for small businesses to finance innovation and growth and when a local government is supporting that in a relevant way, thats even better.

In that sense: great initiative in Luxembourg these days, with a deal between the European Funds for Strategic Investments (EFSI) and BNP Paribas in Luxembourg for lending cheap money to innovative SMBs in the marketplace. EFSI pretty much is a tool of the EU Commission to boost innovation and jobs. So say something that the EU is a bad thing. It is not. You can read how good it really is on the EU Commissions website.

Full details on the Luxembourg deal can be found here.

 

Amazing: The submarine cable map 2016.

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teleTelegeography releases the Submarine Cable Map annually – which comes always stunning, not only because of its content but also for the art work. You can find their 2016-edition here – but also check out last years beauty here.

What is a container? Application Architecture moving forward.

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Recently there has been a bit of talk about „Containers“ for application design – versus Virtual Machines for instance. I am far away from being an IT expert but it sure smelled like a buzz-word that is confusing at best. So I tried to wrap my head around it. I found two articles most helpful, which is why I want to share them:

The first is from TechCrunch: WTF is a Container?

The other comes from CIO: What are Containers and why do you need them? 

Good reads, well recommended.