I propose that this should be run as a separate business from the bank
that operates your current account. Due to the intricacies of the card
association rules this business may still have to be a bank, but it
should be a bank whose limited purpose is to issue payment cards.
The card issuer could make money from a membership fee and/or
transaction costs. Membership fee might be sponsored by other banks
buying branded cards. There already is an established business model
for affinity credit cards of which I don't know too much, but it could
be easily be adapted.
e-gold had a large market of 3rd party debit cards often issued on
Lithuanian and Latvian banks. Users would have to load money onto the
card from their egold account, which worked but was really
inconvenient.
OAuth to the rescue again. Rather than loading the card, you link it
to your bank account using standard OAuth. During the OAuth token
authorization process a user could set daily transaction limits. This
would allow them to on the fly perform transfers and check balances on
your account. It would also be extremely simple for a user to
disconnect the card from bank account if stolen. All you need to do is
just revoke the OAuth token.
I'm just brain dumping here. But this also strikes me as being able to
support several very profitable businesses. The main task would be to
create a system to convert the issuing banks incoming visa/mc requests
to OAuth requests.
P
--
http://agree2.com - Reach Agreement!
http://extraeagle.com - Solutions for the electronic Extra Legal world
http://stakeventures.com - Bootstrapping blog