Lunch Debate: The end of the Cheque? Digital Payments in an Ageing Society

Description

Lunch Debate for policy makers International Longevity Centre (ILC) co-organised with us a Lunch Debate for policy makers. It took place in a private room in Shepherd's Restaurant, Westminster on 27 February 2012. It was attended by people from: banks (Alan Ainsworth, Barclaycard; Laura Tough, Barclays); people who take and make payments (Richard Braham, British Retail Consortium; Keith Boughton, Xaffinity Paymaster; Melora Jezierska, Charity Finance Directors Group; Wayne Stephens, Department of Work and Pensions). Legislators were represented by David Ward MP who presented the 2010 cheques bill and Lord John McFall who was chair of the treasury select committee when cheques were discussed there. Age UK (Lucy Malenczuk) and Gransnet editor Geraldine Bedell were there to represent older people. Adrian Kamellard, chief executive of the Payments Council attended and handled most of the questions to them which speaks to how seriously they now take the issue of inclusion. Finally, Andrew Tyrer from the Technology Strategy Board attended to represent research funders. In addition, invitees from PayPal, Santander and the HM Treasury Financial Inclusion Task Force, had to cancel at the last moment but have been sent details of the project. The theme for the meeting was "The end of the Cheque? Digital Payments in an Ageing Society." It was chaired by Baroness Sally Greengross and took the form of a discussion over lunch. Andrew Monk gave a 10 minute presentation on the project at the start and we took a display and the Electronic Cheque demonstration (see Impact Highlight 2 below) that was used in the period when invitees were gathering for lunch. Each invitee was given a copy of our 70 page project report "Eighty Something: new approaches to banking for the older old". "Eighty something", as in "twenty something", is a term we have adopted in much of our reporting as being more acceptable to our participants than "older old" and briefer than "eighty and ninety year olds". There was considerable interest in the electronic cheque as a demonstration of how one could initiate an electronic transaction without the use of a laptop or smart phone. Instead, this uses paper and a smart pen. The discussion started with questions about how this might work in a real banking context and then moved on to the more general topic of how to ensure that future developments in payment technology become more inclusive. With regard to the latter, one possibility considered was to set up some sort of advisory board representing financial services, their users (particularly those groups that are currently in danger of exclusion) and organisations that research these issues (e.g., Age UK and ILC-UK). This group would advise the UK Payments Council. The ILC were keen to pursue this idea and have joined a payments council group. The discussion also considered the need for a stronger legal framework to ensure inclusion when new payment methods are considered. It was suggested that making payments is an essential service like water or electricity and some sort of universal obligation should be considered to ensure that those who wish to can live independently. The problem is to reach agreement about what the core essential service is and what exceptions (e.g., people with dementia) should be considered. The meeting was most successful in our aim of opening up a conversation with legislators and policy groups that we are currently following up. David Sinclair of the ILC lists the following impacts this has had (see attached document for email): · Baroness Greengross was invited by the Payments Council (June 2012) to write an article which was included in the Payments Council Newsletter (Communiqué). In it she flagged the importance of accessible and usable payment technologies for older people and mentioned your project and our joint event. · ILC-UK issued a press release (7 March) responding to new fraud statistics and arguing that “New innovations in payments must be accessible and usable for all age groups”. We mentioned the joint event. · Since the event, ILC-UK has been invited to join the Payments Council’s consumer advisory group. This has met once since the meeting. · ILC-UK have also been asked to contribute to the “Payments Council Consumer Research Advisory Group”. We have attended a meeting of the group and undertaken an interview with the researchers. We have highlighted your work as part of this . · ILC-UK organised an event in May 2012 (150 people) which focussed on the role of technology to improve care whilst reduce costs. In my presentation I highlighted the importance of the usability and accessibility of technology (including payments technology). I mentioned your research project in my presentation. · David Sinclair has (so far) also mentioned the broad findings (re usability and in relation to the importance of engaging/researching the oldest old) at two conferences abroad. He spoke at the launch of the Vodafone smart accessibility awards (May 2012) incorporating themes of accessibility and usability. David made similar comments speaking at a conference organised by the European Committee of the Regions in Italy in June 2012. It was less successful in engaging the organisations that provide payments. Despite the best efforts of ILC-UK and the Payments Council only Barclays and Barclaycard (actually the same company) attended. Neither of these invitees, who were policy people, indicated any interest in involving their product design departments. In this respect the Electronic Cheques press release (see below) was much more successful as it generated two meetings with product departments. Contact: David Sinclair Assistant Director, Policy and Communications International Longevity Centre - UK [email protected]

Period	27 Feb 2012
Event type	Seminar
Location	London, United KingdomShow on map