Asia

Australia’s Commonwealth Bank Unveils Mobile-Payment Platform

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia on Oct. 26 unveiled a mobile-payment platform to enable iPhone-owning customers to do online banking, instantly send funds to Facebook friends or to anyone’s email address or telephone number, and, with the use of a special cover, make contactless payments. The service, called Commbank Kaching, will be available for download

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New Chinese Social Security Card To Include Payment, Banking Applications

China’s new multifunction contactless social security card will support yuan-denominated cash withdrawals, funds transfers and other consumer-oriented banking applications, government officials told reporters at a press conference Aug. 30. However, it will not support a credit card function, officials said, not explaining why. Earlier this month, China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security announced

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Maria and Fons on the radio

My business partner Fons Tuinstra and I were interviewed today by David Iwinski of American Entrepreneur Radio on his The International Capitalist best two-way radio show. Iwinski was great to talk to — and the guy is an international entrepreneur himself and really knows his stuff. He’s the managing director of Jin Fu Consulting, a

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The Great Risk Race

As Asia’s dynamic markets demand risk management attention and expertise, financial firms rush to fill a talent gap, with particular urgency in China. Three years ago, when Yang Haitao, an experienced financial risk manager, moved to Shanghai to join Nanyang Commercial Bank (China), he knew it was going to be more than a routine job

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Two paths from DabbleDB

Over the past few years, my company has become very dependent on DabbleDB, an online relational database run by a Canadian startup — since sold to Twitter. We run our workflow systems, our accounting and billing, our recruiting, and our customer relationship management on DabbleDB. We use it as a back-end database for the China

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Working in the sun

I do not, normally, consider myself a low-energy person — I am, after all, running two companies (Trombly International and the China Speakers Bureau) and starting a third (Hyperica). But I do notice that my energy flags at certain times — such as when I’m in Moscow. And I’m full of energy in other locations,

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