Food and wine as collateral for bank loans – There’s no arguing that a good Barolo or proscuiuto is valuable. So, why not use it as collateral? That’s what some Italian bankers are proposing.

Agricultural lenders see opportunities in the local foods movement – Today’s boutique and specialty growers may be big business tomorrow.

Apple’s cool matrix-style [...]

Now, that’s localization! Bank Machine, which runs 50,000 ATMs in the UK, has programmed five ATMs in London with a Cockney interface. Just insert your “bladder of lard” (card). Want cash? Push the button for Sausage & Mash.
The company plans on rolling out ATMs in other dialects, including Brummie (Birmingham), Geordie (Newcastle), Scouse (Liverpool) [...]

We’ve written about the potential of using social media (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Yelp, etc.) as resources for offline marketing efforts, including digital signage. The idea is that through conducting regular scans of social media networks, marketers can have a better sense for what their customers are talking about and (especially when the discussion is about [...]

NYT has an amazing interactive graphic showing the results of the American Time Use Survey. The good news for bank marketers is that you can see the ebbs and flows of how customers spend their time.
The bad news: Americans spend on average no more than 6 minutes per day doing “assorted services,” a category that [...]

While many of our European readers bask in the Mediterranean sun, we offer this collection of links directly and not-so-directly related to the world of banking and retail. Enjoy.

How tech is changing banks – Depositing checks using an iPhone? Making mobile-to-mobile money transfers? It’s all coming your way and bound to have an impact on [...]

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that longer queues and wait times are frustrating for customers. But how long is long? At what point do customers do bail? At what point does the customer experience turn sour — even if the customer sticks around to complete their transaction?
Bonnie McGeer delved into the matter [...]

Have you heard about Starbucks’ new retail experiment? The coffee chain that spent the last decade stamping out carbon-copy store locations is “de-branding” a number of locations, starting with a Seattle location, now called “15th Ave Coffee & Tea.”
Gone is the familiar green and white mermaid logo. So, too, are the automated espresso machines. In [...]