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Why write something in a few hundred words, when you can use a few thousand?Like his friendly editor at Bloomberg, let me help edit and condense this tome while preserving most of the actual substance.(Sorry Chris, I really couldn't help it. Like you wrote, it's important to keep a sense of humor, right?)I am leaving China. After nine years working for the HSBC Business School of Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School as a professor teaching international trade, negotiations, and ethics, I am leaving China. In early November 2017, the HSBC Business School informed me they would not renew my contract. In March 2018 they informed me they wished to sever all ties by April 1, 2018.I leave thankful for the time I spent in Shenzhen, China, and working with elite students in China. Despite technical protections, I knew and accepted the risks of working for the primary university in China run by the Communist Party in China as a self professed libertarian. Though provided an “official” reason for not renewing my contract, my conscience is clean and I can document most everything that demonstrates the contrary should I ever need to prove otherwise. I know the unspoken reason for my dismissal. You do not work under the Communist Party without knowing the risks.I was fired from my job. Therefore, I am leaving China.My employer laid out detailed reasons why I was fired. Instead of addressing those reasons and moving on, I am going to concoct a story about how it was all a big conspiracy where I was martyred for my noble, libertarian beliefs.This story will be 100% supported by all zero of the references that I will be able to provide from my former employer.Living in China over the past nine years has been an amazing experience both personally and professionally. Working in China as an academic is like being placed in the greatest economics, finance, and business lab which has been shockingly unexplored. In addition to doing some academic research, I felt blessed to write and speak for different organizations from Bloomberg to Foreign Policy. For someone who suffers from academic ADD (a difficulty spending 3 years on a paper that will appear in print 2-4 years later), I felt blessed to be able to dive into Chinese data everyday exploring aspects that most in my position simply do not get to explore.Watching the change first hand while diving into the data and being able to write about it has been a profound privilege and honor. I felt a profound responsibility to get it right and tell you what I was seeing and hearing. I still remember the first time I got an email from someone at Bloomberg who would ultimately edit a lot of my work, I thought for sure it was a spam email. I did not even respond for a few days because up until that point I thought my Mom was probably the only person reading my work.Personally, two of my three children have been born here (one under the wildest of circumstances which I must relate at a later date) and they have grown up attending Chinese language elementary schools. One of the things I am most proud of for my time in China is that my children speak, read, and write age fluent Chinese and whenever they see Chinese children in airports or on playgrounds in Shenzhen interact seamlessly. When I first came to China, my focus was international trade and I wanted to live overseas for a while but knew relatively little about China. Though we told ourselves, we will stay until it was time to go, we probably though [sic] we would stay 3 years and leave. Nine years later, our family is glad we came and bittersweet to be leaving.Living in China for the past nine years was fantastic. I learned zero Chinese, because my time was instead spent being non-productive in other areas.But my kids did! Between me and my kids, you have a 75% probability of getting a fluent Chinese speaker. Note to self: Add "Mandarin: Proficient" to my CV.I am afflicted with “academic ADD,” a term I coined as an excuse I tell myself for my decidedly less-than-mediocre academic performance. Interestingly, while writer’s block afflicts my ability to publish anything of substance, I find myself quite able to spew out nearly four thousand words in my farewell diatribe. After all, I imagine this letter is being read at this very moment by Xi Dada himself.For many months as I looked at different options, both in China and globally, I struggled with where exactly to go. For personal and professional, I hoped to stay in China, Hong Kong, or Asia. However, after quietly sharing my situation with a small number of people and some things I was told unrelated to my personal situation, it became abundantly clear that I could not stay in China. China has reached a point where I do not feel safe being a professor and discussing even the economy, business, and financial markets. Better to leave on your own terms than being deported after receiving an 8-10 year visa. As a result, I have decided to leave China. I will announce my future plans, projects, and activities later though I am quite excited about where I will be going what I will be doing.You see, I am a Very Important Person. My nine years in China have granted me the inalienable right to proclaim myself an expert on all things China.And I have the power through my words and important-ness to obliterate the Chinese Communist Party. As such, I am a threat to the CCP which makes it no longer safe for me here. That is why I need to remove myself from this place.Yes, that is the real reason why I was fired and cannot find another job in the region, not because I was bad at my job. I was fired because They discovered my secret identity and are scared of the power I wield.I want to make perfectly clear that any complaints I wrote about in any forum are reflective only of my concerns about the illiberal, authoritarian communist government of China and not the Chinese people. Most professor colleagues, even those I would consider pro-Party, were good colleagues whom I enjoyed talking, debating (yes, it happens behind closed doors and I learned a lot from them) and working with. The Chinese friends I made outside of the work place from people we met in overlapping social circles to neighbors to parents of my children’s school mates were always friendly and helpful ready to assist a foreigner struggling to navigate some of the basics of life in China. My children whether at Chinese language schools or local rec centers, were always treated well and made friends. I will use strong language about the authoritarian communist government but I do not want that in anyway to reflect upon the Chinese people.Before I launch into my rant about China, let me preface this by stating that Chinese people are awesome. Like seriously awesome.After all, some of my best friends have 23andMe DNA relatives[1] that are Chinese. Everybody should get themselves a Chinese amigo; they are so friendly and amusing. They do cute things in the summer like expose their bellies to cool themselves off. Just really salt-of-the-earth people like Pearl Buck[2] described.You see, it’s really the Chinese government that I despise, not the people. I always like to go back to Axiom #1 for any competent China Expert: The Chinese Communist Party is the Source of Everything That is Wrong in China and Holding Back All the Good Salt-of-the-Earth Chinese Folks From Achieving Their Full Potential.I can’t emphasize that enough. Lets say it one more time for good measure. CCP, Bad. Folksy Chinese People, Good.Now that we’ve got that out of the way …Living in China is not without quirks both maddening and amusing. For instance, something as simple as standing in line in many places can devolve into a knife fight given the utter lack of restraint in cutting that is so common. In many parts of China and even new immigrants to Shenzhen, there is no social prohibition on openly gawking at foreigners while pointing and talking about them. One daughter, the less social one, became so off put by the picture taking she would pretend to be asleep as a child in a stroller to avoid the attention. The other more social one would do local interviews in Chinese and frequently pose for pictures. One time, some people were openly talking about us in an elevator. After we left the elevator my eldest was mildly angry about something and when I asked her what the problem was she complained that the people in the elevator kept calling her Snow White. I was able to convince her it was intended as a good thing.I have been in a fair number of countries and China still remains the more foreign place that I continually have to figure out every day. Other countries have been to in Asia, developed and developing, and even Africa seem less disorienting and culturally dissimilar. This is both exhilarating, exciting, frustrating, amusing and tiring. My wife and I would frequently joke that every day you lived in China you would see something you had never seen before.OMG Chinese people are so crazy and exotic! They seem even more foreign than Africans — I know, hard to believe, right? Even though I never felt it was important enough to learn a lick of Chinese in my nine years here, I think my opinions of Chinese people and society are spot-on accurate.Indeed, my opinion matters so much that I am 100% sure that the CCP told my employer to fire me because of the big threat I posed to China’s national security. Again let me re-iterate it had nothing to do with performance or lack thereof. In fact, a little birdie told me that the order came straight from Chairman Xi himself.One of the most interesting thing to me was to see how my thinking evolved over time in China. Prior to coming, I was and still am a libertarian leaning professor. I had not given a lot of thought to human rights either in the United States or in China. While many are aware of a variety of the cases that receive attention, I think what struck me is how this filters down into the culture. There is a complete and utter lack of respect for the individual or person in China. People do not have innate value as people simply because they exist.My thinking has changed after coming to China. Before I came to China I was a research associate[3] which is a euphemism for spending my days getting coffee and crunching Excel tables for my boss. Now, that job title has been upgraded to “professor” because … let’s face it … it just sounds better for someone who was just fired — sorry I mean politically persecuted — and needs to look for a new job.Just like dropping the “associate” appendage and throwing out terms like “tenured with Chinese characteristics” makes it sound as if I were a real professor like my hero Mike[4].This leads most directly to a lack of respect for the law/rules/norms. One thing I began to realize over time is, while not German, how law, rule, and norm abiding Americans are with minimal fear of enforcement. Cutting in line is considered extremely rude because there is a sense of fairness and that people have equal rights. In China, line cutting is considered nearly standard operating procedure. There is a common and accepted respect for others even if just it is as simple as standing in line.In a way, I sympathize with Chairman Xi’s emphasis on rule of law because in my experience laws/rules/norms are simply ignored. They are ignored quietly so as not to embarrass the enforcer, however, frequently, the enforcer knows rules or laws are being ignored but so long as the breaker is not egregious, both parties continue to exist in a state of blissful ignorance. Honesty without force is not normal but an outlier. Lying is utterly common, but telling the truth revolutionary.I rationalize the silent contempt for the existing rules and laws within China as people not respecting the method for creating and establishing the rules and laws. Rather than confronting the system, a superior, or try good faith attempts to change something, they choose a type of quiet subversion by just ignoring the rule or law. This quickly spreads to virtually every facet of behavior as everything can be rationalized in a myriad of ways. Before coming to China, I had this idea that China was rigid which in some ways it is, but in reality it is brutally chaotic because there are no rules it is the pure rule of the jungle with unconstrained might imposing their will and all others ignoring laws to behave as they see fit with no sense of morality or respect for right.I gained tremendous insight into the Chinese during my time here.Here’s just one to give you a peek into my treasure trove of China insights: Deep down, Chinese people really want to rise up and crush the Chinese Communist Party. You see, I used my extensive academic experience to conduct a scientific poll over the past (close to a) decade.Every day on my way to work, I would ask every Chinese person I bumped into in my best American-accented English: “Do you want to rise up and crush the party?” And 96% of them would smile and nod. I counted! My paper on this will be published in 2025 and it will be a landmark study on Chinese attitudes towards government.It’s times like these which make me wonder whether not being able to speak Chinese is actually an advantage in my line of work.I had a lawyer tell me about the corruption crackdown, and even most convicted of crimes, that people referred to them as “unlucky”. As he noted, there was almost no concept of justice even if people recognized the person had done what they were accused of having done. The discipline stemmed not from their behavior but they were cannon fodder for some game chosen by a higher authority.China wrestles with these issues like clockwork every few years after a tragic incident goes viral. A common one is when someone is run over by a car and pedestrians just step over the body until a family member finds the body. The video goes viral, prompts a week of hand wringing, and then censors step in to talk about Confucianism and how the economy is growing. There is no innate value given to human life as precious.A friend of mine in China who is a Christian missionary, told me a story about a time he was invited to speak at the local English corner they had in the apartment development where locals would get together hopefully with foreigners and practice English. He was asked to speak on what is the meaning of life, perfect for a part time missionary. He said he knew what people would say having lived in China for sometime but even [sic] so was stunned at how deeply and rigidly held the belief that making money was the entire meaning of life. There was no value system. There was no exogenously held right or wrong, only whether you made money. With apologies to a bastardized Dostoevsky, with money as God, all is permissible.Here is a cornucopia of other broad insights I gained into Chinese people and society in my time there:Chinese people are genetically programmed rule-ignorers and line-cutters.Chinese people have no ethics or morals, cannot comprehend right/wrong and have no value system.Chinese people don’t believe in justice.Chinese people don’t consider human life to be precious.Really the only thing they believe in is money.When someone is hit by a car, the general response from a your typical Chinese person is to step over your body (and probably spit on you for good measure).The Christopher Balding “Saving Face” theory on the social compact between rule-breaking population and blind-eye-turning regulators.The Christopher Balding “Clockwork” theory on the cycle of social media tragedy / hand-wringing / censorship.Confucianism.Dostoevsky.As inventors of the magnetic compass, I find it a bit ironic that Chinese people don’t have a moral compass. Boom!I have rigorous analysis backing all of these insights. Unfortunately, it cannot be shared because my sources would be revealed, and likely summarily executed by the Chinese Communist Party.I could talk at length about that what I have observed, but I am not a human rights expert and what type of cultural changes or evolution it engenders. However, while the well known cases draw attention, these attitudes and responses set the tone for a culture where individuals, respect, and truth mean nothing.This has impacted my broader thinking in that executive space (thinking of the United States but also applicable elsewhere) is that laws need to be enforced consistently not at the whim of the superior. If the law exists it should be enforced and consistent, otherwise it should be removed. Currently, the United States is going further and further in a direction where laws are applied inconsistently shifting from varying enforcement regimes under different executives. Law is not law if the government can choose whether to enforce it. Law has become the whimsy of sovereigns prone to political fancy.This applies as well to how everyone is treated. From a President we may have reason to suspect of illegal activity to an immigrant fighting for asylum, all are innocent until proven guilty and treated humanely. I see this pernicious cycle taking place from China in the United States where decency and humanity on all sides (I am not going to apportion blame here) is swallowed by shrill invectives that people then use to justify their own lack of decency in pursuit of whatever they believe to be right. America will not return to its principles by partisans justifying increasingly coarse behavior and rhetoric.Coupled with the lack of decency is the shift as to what problems people are fighting over. I am amazed when I go to the US or Europe and everyone is talking about how oppressive the government is and this specific policy issue signals the end of democracy if their side doesn’t win and when the next financial crisis will hit. I personally think 2008 created a near social PTSD syndrome across a range of view points. Almost like the wealthy who need therapy despite living materially comfortable lives, Americans are fighting with vitriolic rhetoric in seemingly unnecessary ways.I am scared the U.S. is becoming as bad and indecent as those frickin’ commies. Let’s pull it together, people!The people that I respect most are those who can live their convictions. You may be a socialist or a libertarian but have the depth of character to accept the tradeoffs and risks associated with your belief system. Too many people use situational principles that apply to their side when it is beneficial rather than consistently applying a principle that we believe is good for all people. What results from tribal fighting is an erosion of principles where sides fight over who is worse or less bad rather than fighting to uphold principles.One of my favorite television characters is Dwight Schrute[5] from The Office. Not only is he a good-looking guy — more than once have people remarked about the passing resemblance — more importantly, he sticks to his principles with conviction, no matter how eclectic these convictions may be sometimes.One of the reasons principles matter is that each side feels locked in a death struggle. Principles are unwelcome to many because there are times we do not like those principles or where our side will lose if we abide by that principle. The principle matters more than the short term win or loss. All powers we demand can be used against us at some point. America needs to return to seeking to uphold the highest of principles knowing there will be times our side loses because we chose to uphold a principle. In a democracy, you are going to lose based upon historical precedent, probably about 50% of the time. That is the point of democracy. Rather than delusionaly believing in vast mandates, candidates should recognize that in recent history they have been elected on narrow margins and hew a more moderate path.I think one of the great things about America that people forget is that it is an experiment. It is an experiment like none other that is truly unique for any major country. There is no country in the world that is in such a state of constant flux and change from a macro-historical perspective. Wave after wave over the past few hundred years of immigrants that drive ambition and innovation are hallmarks.Any large American city will have a higher foreign born population than the entirety of China. America has one of the highest net migration rates of any major economy and accepts more immigrants than any other country. Of major economies, only Canada and Germany are higher as a percentage of foreign born population share. It is easy to focus on specific incidents that make the situation seem dire, but in reality America remains an enormously welcoming country to immigrants.I think of an area where I know well academia and start ups. The ability of foreign born academics to rise to a position of prominence or create a start up in China is virtually zero. In the United States, Silicon Valley is rich with a foreign born population or the children of immigrants and the professor and deans ranks are filled with foreign born population. The United States is in a continual state of its own internal flux but that is what the experiment is: a country not founded on blood or ideology but a shared destiny of values and principles that all men are created equal.China makes it impossible for academics such as myself to rise to prominence. My lack of academic productivity stemmed from the fact that the rules were stacked against me. That is why I was fired, not because it took me the better part of a decade to write literally nothing of academic substance.#meagainsttheworld #2pac #tenurewithchinesecharacteristicsThe United States has repeatedly failed and continues to fall short of its ideals but has shown a greater sense of self correction than almost any other. In China you cannot talk about most of history, while in the United States there are constant reminders about failures and how to apply those lessons. We must remember that it is an ongoing experiment of values we hold to be self evident, not an already attained ideal but a continual working out of what we believe.U.S. system = right. Chinese system = wrong.Chinese people = awesome.Me = China ExpertI want to thank a few people for a variety of things. I want to thank my Bloomberg editors Tim Lavin and Nisid Hajari who have tirelessly worked to improve my writing and more concise. I have learned a lot from their notes and pushing and appreciate their patience from a data junkie professor. They do great work to make me sound much better than I am sure I do.I also want to thank others I have had as editors and learned from. James Palmer at Foreign Policy and Zach Coleman at the Nikkei Asian Review are both long time China and Asia hands who have helped push my writing to become better and express ideas better. Their help has been deeply appreciated.I want to apologize to those I may have offended on Twitter (with a couple of exceptions). I believe it is important to focus first on the principles, let others have their ideas or viewpoints, and keep it light. If there is one thing the world needs to do more it is laugh. Living through this bizarre period of history requires levity at the absurdity.I want to laud so many people such as journalists and activist that face real harassment, monitoring, and hurdles everyday in working to uncover what is happening in China and those resisting all encompassing authoritarianism we see in China. One thing I have come to believe deeply is that beliefs and convictions are only manifested in adversity or when tested. Beliefs which only receive beneficial feedback are less convictions and more conveniences. While I do not wish to belittle the challenges others face, journalists and activists in China face enormous daily challenges.There are other martyrs like me out there and I wanted to give them a shout out.In China, there are very few people who I witness live a testament of their belief. Who knows if the Party member is a member because he believes in Marxism, Communism, Xi-ism, or simply wants a better apartment? Who knows if the person who claims to be a believer in democracy but complies with the Party actually believes that or just tells the foreigner? Foreigners in China in positions of influence who claim to believe in human rights but collaborate with the Party to deny Chinese citizens rights need to answer for their actions. I have little idea what people in China believe but I know that if the Party ever falls, there will be more than a billion more people claiming they were closet democracy advocates.Sometimes Chinese people would come up to me and start making strange sounds. How can I tell what these people are really thinking if they don't speak to me in a language I understand?That said, I love Chinese people! Power to the masses! Tank man!We should never wish adversity upon ourselves, but recognize that US ideals and values are being tested. I have every confidence that American ideals will come out stronger but make no mistake, it is a trying time. Sometimes you need to be tested in your beliefs to know those convictions hold beyond convenience or benefit.One of my biggest fears living in China has always been that I would be detained. Though I happily pointed out the absurdity of the rapidly encroaching authoritarianism, a fact which continues to elude so many experts not living in China, I tried to make sure I knew where the line was and did not cross it. There is a profound sense of relief to be leaving safely knowing others, Chinese or foreigners, who have had significantly greater difficulties than myself. There are many cases which resulted in significantly more problems for them. I know I am blessed to make it out.My social media influence is strong — don’t believe me, count my Twitter followers — and that has made me Public Enemy No. 1 in China.Rumor is that they have a poster of me on the wall at the Wumao headquarters. But I was able to make it out using some real James Bond shiet. I am pretty sure Netflix is going to produce a movie about my crazy life story. And I certainly do hope Rainn Wilson[6] picks up the lead role.I leave China profoundly worried about the future of China and US China relations. Most attention here has focused on the Thucydides Trap where conflict results from an established and a rising power. This leaves out probably the most important variable not just the distinction between an established and a rising power but the values inherent within each state and the system they want to project defining relations between states and the citizenry to the state.Obligatory shout out to Thucycides, Patron Saint of China Experts.Want more China Expert insights? Here's another one. Lean in because I am going to whisper:They have this chat tool called WeChat. It's like Facebook and WhatsApp and Google all rolled up in one! Rumor is you can even use it to buy stuff.See? I told you I am The China Expert. Seriously guys, follow me on Twitter and you will get a true insider's view into China — amazing insights only insiders like me would have such as this knowledge I just shared about this crazy WeChat tool.The United States under Trump and the GOP is facing a significant test and re-evaluation of its principles. However, I remain decidedly confident in the US to handle those tests. The self correction nature of democracy is on clear display. The best case scenario for the Trump administration is to minimize congressional losses with the very real possibility of losing control of the house. President Trump has lost more in the courts than he has won and is under investigations by law enforcement headed by registered Republicans. His own party has been unable to pass consequential legislation except for a tax cut. While none of this confronts the international challenges facing the United States, it speaks to the evolutionary, self corrective nature of US democracy.The United States continues to take the largest number of immigrants and rank as one of the most open economies and investment markets in the world, even for Chinese immigrants and businesses. Saying the United States is facing problems is like saying Warren Buffets [sic] stock is down a little this year. The United States however must return to its liberal international values. The United States because we lead by example and make the sacrifices from opening our markets regardless of how others behave to making enormous contributions to security in Europe and Asia.I am also going to shout out Warren Buffett even though I don’t know how to properly spell his name. We libertarians must stick together.Side note: Warren, my man ... why do you keep investing actual greenbacks into China? Don't you know this place is full of fraudsters? It's a Ponzi scheme economy! Do you not read my Twitter feed[7]? Aren’t my ever-changing Twitter handles so wink-wink subversive?Conversely, China is a rising power but probably more importantly is a deeply illiberal, expansionist, authoritarian, police state opposed to human rights, democracy, free trade, and rule of law. Just as we need to consider the state, speed, and direction of change in the United States, China has been deeply illiberal authoritarian for many years, is becoming increasingly illiberal, and is accelerating the pace of change towards greater control. It both puzzles and concerns me having lived in China for nearly a decade as a public employee to hear Polyanna statements from China “experts” in the United States who talk about the opening and reform of China or refuse to consider the values being promoted. I was left mouth agape once when someone I would consider a liberal internationalist who values human rights informed me he was focused on business and would leave those other issues aside. The values represented by China cannot be divorced from its rise and influence.I am quite adept at making clever use of quotes around the word “experts” to convey the message that they are really buffoons. Boom! So easy.The rise of China represents a clear and explicit threat not to the United States but to the entirety of liberal democracy, human rights, and open international markets. We see the world slowly being divided into China supported authoritarian regimes of various stripes that support its creeping illiberalism across a range of areas. The tragedy of modern American foreign policy is the history of active ignorance and refusal to actively confront the Chinese norm or legal violations. The Trump administration is utterly incapable of defending the values and assembling the coalition that would respond to American leadership as they face even greater threats from China.The concern is not over Chinese access to technology to facilitate economic development for a liberal open state. The concern is over the use of technology to facilitate human rights violations and further cement closed markets. That is a threat for which neither the United States or any other democracy loving country should apologize for.I should note that I like many other am concerned about the level of government surveillance on citizenry. However, equating Beijing to Washington in many of these specific issues is simply non-sensical authoritarian apologetics. Let me just briefly run through some of the enormous differences. First, some have argued tech firms gather data which is true but does not distinguish what happens to the data. Unlike China, the US government does not have free access to all electronic data. Second, China uses control over electronic communication in vastly draconian cyber dystopia ways compared to the wide range of opinions that are allowed online in the rest of the world. By simple comparison, Winnie the Pooh is censored in China while in the United States the debate is over whether some information should be restricted that is deemed inaccurate. It is nothing less than authoritarian apologetics to attempt to equate the two in any serious manner.Because only China Experts (without quotes, of course) are allowed call the kettle black.It is profoundly misguided and short sighted to view the rise of China as tension arising either purely from rising economic development in a major state or as a bilateral conflict with the United States. China represents a clear and present threat to liberal democracies, open markets, and international system nor do they even now attempt to hide this policy. These tensions for the foreseeable future will only increase. I do not like the way Trump has handled his approach to China and the very valid concerns he raises about their practices, but I find it even more troubling the near total lack of any attempt to deal with these issue previous administrations and the surrogates have displayed for many years and continue to display. China presents a fundamental threat to the liberal democratic order and the ignorance on display by so many is simply mind boggling.A few months ago, I had someone I know send me an email asking for a small favor. I did it sent the email back and moved on. Later that day they called me and I picked up the phone expecting questions about the email. They started by thanking me and then said they just wanted to check up and see how I was doing knowing my situation. Even for myself who tries not to get worked up or live in China looking over my shoulder, the worry is ever present. A small gesture that meant a lot.One thing the electronic world has removed from us a sense of personal intimacy. In reality, President Trump has very little impact on most people’s life. If you’re worried about him fanning flames of intolerance, reach out to a minority colleague or friend and have coffee. If you want Muslims to know they are accepted, invite some over for dinner.My chosen method is enjoying a cigar and a drink with people where you have conversation and get to know people on a personal level. Not what nationality is on their passport but about them as people. I always ask people where they are from. As an example, most people respond with some broad national classifier like “I’m Indian.” Especially in a place like Hong Kong, this tells you nothing about someone. Where are you from not what is your ethnic classification. An “Indian” could have grown up in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, India, the UK, or Palo Alto. What is your life experience that makes you unique that helps me understand who I am talking to better? That type of knowledge comes from taking a little extra time to identify someone as an individual rather than a set of probabilities attached to group multiple group classifications.Before I close it out, one last attempt at virtue-signalling.I am excited about where I am heading and different projects I will be announcing in the future. For now, I leave China relieved, content in what I have done, feeling blessed at the opportunities I have received and those that lie ahead.Except for one more note to drop tomorrow, I’m heading off the grid, travel some in America, read books mostly unrelated to China, and prepare for the next phase. Thanks for listening to my rambling, data obsession, and Dad jokes.Remember, you didn’t fire me, I fired you.Zai zian, bitches.Balding Out.Footnotes[1] DNA Genetic Testing & Analysis - 23andMe [2] Pearl S. Buck - Wikipedia[3] Christopher Balding[4] Michael Pettis[5] Dwight Schrute - Wikipedia[6] Rainn Wilson - Wikipedia[7] Capitalist Roader Balding

No need to worry! Here, I am sharing a List of Online Shopping Sites in India or download All-in-One Online Shopping appOnline shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser. Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of the retailer directly or by searching among alternative vendors using a shopping search engine, which displays the same product's availability and pricing at different e-retailers. As of 2016, customers can shop online using a range of different computers and devices, including desktop computers, laptops, tablet computers and smartphones.An online shop evokes the physical analogy of buying products or services at a regular "bricks-and-mortar" retailer or shopping center; the process is called business-to-consumer (B2C) online shopping. When an online store is set up to enable businesses to buy from another businesses, the process is called business-to-business (B2B) online shopping. A typical online store enables the customer to browse the firm's range of products and services, view photos or images of the products, along with information about the product specifications, features and prices.Online stores typically enable shoppers to use "search" features to find specific models, brands or items. Online customers must have access to the Internet and a valid method of payment in order to complete a transaction, such as a credit card, an Interac-enabled debit card, or a service such as PayPal. For physical products (e.g., paperback books or clothes), the e-tailer ships the products to the customer; for digital products, such as digital audio files of songs or software, the e-tailer typically sends the file to the customer over the Internet. The largest of these online retailing corporations are Alibaba, Amazon.com, and eBay.[1]Part of a series onE-commerceOnline goods and servicesDigital distributionE-booksSoftwareStreaming mediaRetail servicesBankingDVD-by-mailFlower deliveryFood orderingGroceryPharmacyTravelMarketplace servicesAdvertisingAuctionsComparison shoppingSocial commerceTrading communitiesWalletMobile commercePaymentTicketingCustomer serviceCall centreHelp deskLive support softwareE-procurementPurchase-to-payvteContents1 Terminology2 History 2.1 History of Online Shopping 2.2 Growth in Online Shoppers3 International statistics4 Customers5 Customer buying behaviour in digital environment6 Product selection7 Payment8 Product delivery9 Shopping cart systems10 Design 10.1 Information load 10.2 Consumer needs and expectations 10.3 User interface11 Market share12 Advantages 12.1 Convenience 12.2 Information and reviews 12.3 Price and selection13 Disadvantages 13.1 Fraud and security concerns 13.2 Lack of full cost disclosure 13.3 Privacy14 Product suitability15 Aggregation16 Impact of reviews on consumer behaviour17 See also18 ReferencesTerminologyAlternative names for the activity are "e-tailing", a shortened form of "electronic retail" or "e-shopping", a shortened form of "electronic shopping". An online store may also be called an e-web-store, e-shop, e-store, Internet shop, web-shop, web-store, online store, online storefront and virtual store. Mobile commerce (or m-commerce) describes purchasing from an online retailer's mobile device-optimized website or software application ("app"). These websites or apps are designed to enable customers to browse through a companies' products and services on tablet computers and smartphones.HistoryHistory of Online ShoppingThe growth of the internet as a secure shopping channel has developed since 1994, with the first sales of Sting album 'Ten Summoner's Tales'.[2]Wine, chocolates and flowers soon followed and were among the pioneering retail categories which fueled the growth of online shopping. Researchers found that having products that are appropriate for e-commerce was a key indicator of Internet success.[3]Many of these products did well as they are generic products which shoppers didn't need to touch and feel in order to buy. But also importantly in the early days there were few shoppers online and they were from a narrow segment: affluent, male, 30+. Online shopping has come along way since these early days and -in the UK- accounts for significant percents (depending on product category as percentages can vary).Growth in Online ShoppersAs the revenues from online sales continued to grow significantly researchers identified different types of online shoppers, Rohm & Swaninathan[4]identified four categories and named them "convenience shoppers, variety seekers, balanced buyers, and store-oriented shoppers". They focused on shopping motivations and found that the variety of products available and the perceived convenience of the buying online experience were significant motivating factors. This was different for offline shoppers, who were more motivated by time saving and recreational motives.Digital High Street 2020[5]Michael Aldrich, pioneer of online shopping in the 1980s.English entrepreneur Michael Aldrich was a pioneer of online shopping in 1979. His system connected a modified domestic TV to a real-time transaction processing computer via a domestic telephone line. He believed that videotex, the modified domestic TV technology with a simple menu-driven human–computer interface, was a 'new, universally applicable, participative communication medium — the first since the invention of the telephone.' This enabled 'closed' corporate information systems to be opened to 'outside' correspondents not just for transaction processing but also for e-messaging and information retrieval and dissemination, later known as e-business.[6]His definition of the new mass communications medium as 'participative' [interactive, many-to-many] was fundamentally different from the traditional definitions of mass communication and mass media and a precursor to the social networking on the Internet 25 years later. In March 1980 he launched Redifon's Office Revolution, which allowed consumers, customers, agents, distributors, suppliers and service companies to be connected on-line to the corporate systems and allow business transactions to be completed electronically in real-time.[7]During the 1980s[8]he designed, manufactured, sold, installed, maintained and supported many online shopping systems, using videotex technology.[9]These systems which also provided voice response and handprint processing pre-date the Internet and the World Wide Web, the IBM PC, and Microsoft MS-DOS, and were installed mainly in the UK by large corporations.The first World Wide Web server and browser, created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990, opened for commercial use in 1991.[10]Thereafter, subsequent technological innovations emerged in 1994: online banking, the opening of an online pizza shop by Pizza Hut,[10]Netscape's SSL v2 encryption standard for secure data transfer, and Intershop's first online shopping system. The first secure retail transaction over the Web was either by NetMarket or Internet Shopping Network in 1994.[11]Immediately after, Amazon.com launched its online shopping site in 1995 and eBay was also introduced in 1995.[10]Alibaba's sites Taobao and Tmall were launched in 2003 and 2008, respectively. Retailers are increasingly selling goods and services prior to availability through "pretail" for testing, building, and managing demand.[citation needed]International statisticsStatistics show that in 2012, Asia-Pacific increased their international sales over 30% giving them over $433 billion in revenue. That is a $69 billion difference between the U.S. revenue of $364.66 billion. It is estimated that Asia-Pacific will increase by another 30% in the year 2013 putting them ahead by more than one-third of all global ecommerce sales.[needs update]The largest online shopping day in the world is Singles Day, with sales just in Alibaba's sites at US$9.3 billion in 2014.[12][13]CustomersOnline customers must have access to the Internet and a valid method of payment in order to complete a transaction. Generally, higher levels of education and personal income correspond to more favorable perceptions of shopping online. Increased exposure to technology also increases the probability of developing favorable attitudes towards new shopping channels.[14]Customer buying behaviour in digital environmentThe marketing around the digital environment, customer's buying behaviour may not be influenced and controlled by the brand and firm, when they make a buying decision that might concern the interactions with search engine, recommendations, online reviews and other information. With the quickly separate of the digital devices environment, people are more likely to use their mobile phones, computers, tablets and other digital devices to gather information. In other words, the digital environment has a growing effect on consumer’s mind and buying behaviour. In an online shopping environment, interactive decision may have an influence on aid customer decision making. Each customer is becoming more interactive, and though online reviews customers can influence other potential buyers' behaviors.[15]Subsequently, risk and trust would also are two important factors affecting people's' behavior in digital environments. Customer consider to switch between e-channels, because they are mainly influence by the comparison with offline shopping, involving growth of security, financial and performance-risks In other words, a customer shopping online that they may receive more risk than people shopping in stores. There are three factors may influence people to do the buying decision, firstly, people cannot examine whether the product satisfy their needs and wants before they receive it. Secondly, customer may concern at after-sale services. Finally, customer may afraid that they cannot fully understand the language used in e-sales. Based on those factors customer perceive risk may as a significantly reason influence the online purchasing behaviour.[16]Online retailers has place much emphasis on customer trust aspect, trust is another way driving customer’s behaviour in digital environment, which can depend on customer’s attitude and expectation. Indeed, the company’s products design or ideas can not met customer’s expectations. Customer’s purchase intension based on rational expectations, and additionally impacts on emotional trust. Moreover, those expectations can be also establish on the product information and revision from others.[17]Product selectionConsumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of the retailer directly or by searching among alternative vendors using a shopping search engine. Once a particular product has been found on the website of the seller, most online retailers use shopping cart software to allow the consumer to accumulate multiple items and to adjust quantities, like filling a physical shopping cart or basket in a conventional store. A "checkout" process follows (continuing the physical-store analogy) in which payment and delivery information is collected, if necessary. Some stores allow consumers to sign up for a permanent online account so that some or all of this information only needs to be entered once. The consumer often receives an e-mail confirmation once the transaction is complete. Less sophisticated stores may rely on consumers to phone or e-mail their orders (although full credit card numbers, expiry date, and Card Security Code,[18]or bank account and routing number should not be accepted by e-mail, for reasons of security).PaymentOnline shoppers commonly use a credit card or a PayPal account in order to make payments. However, some systems enable users to create accounts and pay by alternative means, such as:Billing to mobile phones and landlines[19][20]Cash on delivery (C.O.D.)Cheque/ CheckDebit cardDirect debit in some countriesElectronic money of various typesGift cardsPostal money orderWire transfer/delivery on paymentInvoice, especially popular in some markets/countries, such as SwitzerlandBitcoin or other cryptocurrenciesSome online shops will not accept international credit cards. Some require both the purchaser's billing and shipping address to be in the same country as the online shop's base of operation. Other online shops allow customers from any country to send gifts anywhere. The financial part of a transaction may be processed in real time (e.g. letting the consumer know their credit card was declined before they log off), or may be done later as part of the fulfillment process.Product deliveryOnce a payment has been accepted, the goods or services can be delivered in the following ways. For physical items:Shipping: The product is shipped to a customer-designated address. Retail package delivery is typically done by the public postal system or a retail courier such as FedEx, UPS, DHL, or TNT.Drop shipping: The order is passed to the manufacturer or third-party distributor, who then ships the item directly to the consumer, bypassing the retailer's physical location to save time, money, and space.In-store pick-up: The customer selects a local store using a locator software and picks up the delivered product at the selected location. This is the method often used in the bricks and clicks business model.For digital items or tickets:Downloading/Digital distribution:[21] The method often used for digital media products such as software, music, movies, or images.Printing out, provision of a code for, or e-mailing of such items as admission tickets and scrip (e.g., gift certificates and coupons). The tickets, codes, or coupons may be redeemed at the appropriate physical or online premises and their content reviewed to verify their eligibility (e.g., assurances that the right of admission or use is redeemed at the correct time and place, for the correct dollar amount, and for the correct number of uses).Will call, COBO (in Care Of Box Office), or "at the door" pickup: The patron picks up pre-purchased tickets for an event, such as a play, sporting event, or concert, either just before the event or in advance. With the onset of the Internet and e-commerce sites, which allow customers to buy tickets online, the popularity of this service has increased.Shopping cart systemsSimple shopping cart systems allow the off-line administration of products and categories. The shop is then generated as HTML files and graphics that can be uploaded to a webspace. The systems do not use an online database.[22]A high-end solution can be bought or rented as a stand-alone program or as an addition to an enterprise resource planning program. It is usually installed on the company's web server and may integrate into the existing supply chain so that ordering, payment, delivery, accounting and warehousing can be automated to a large extent. Other solutions allow the user to register and create an online shop on a portal that hosts multiple shops simultaneously from one back office. Examples are Big Commerce, Shopify and FlickRocket. Open source shopping cart packages include advanced platforms such as Interchange, and off-the-shelf solutions such as Magento, osCommerce, Shopgate, PrestaShop, and Zen Cart. Commercial systems can also be tailored so the shop does not have to be created from scratch. By using an existing framework, software modules for various functionalities required by a web shop can be adapted and combined.[citation needed]DesignCustomers are attracted to online shopping not only because of high levels of convenience, but also because of broader selections, competitive pricing, and greater access to information.[23][24]Business organizations seek to offer online shopping not only because it is of much lower cost compared to bricks and mortar stores, but also because it offers access to a worldwide market, increases customer value, and builds sustainable capabilities.[clarification needed][25]Information loadDesigners of online shops are concerned with the effects of information load. Information load is a product of the spatial and temporal arrangements of stimuli in the web store.[26]Compared with conventional retail shopping, the information environment of virtual shopping is enhanced by providing additional product information such as comparative products and services, as well as various alternatives and attributes of each alternative, etc.[27]Two major dimensions of information load are complexity and novelty.[28]Complexity refers to the number of different elements or features of a site, often the result of increased information diversity. Novelty involves the unexpected, suppressed, new, or unfamiliar aspects of the site. The novelty dimension may keep consumers exploring a shopping site, whereas the complexity dimension may induce impulse purchases.[27]Consumer needs and expectationsAccording to the output of a research report by Western Michigan University published in 2005, an e-commerce website does not have to be good looking with listing on a lot of search engines. It must build relationships with customers to make money. The report also suggests that a website must leave a positive impression on the customers, giving them a reason to come back.[29]Dyn, an Internet performance management company conducted a survey on more than 1400 consumers across 11 countries in North America, Europe, Middle-East and Asia and the results of the survey are as follows:Online retailers must improve the website speedOnline retailers must ease consumers fear around securityThese concerns majorly affect the decisions of almost two thirds of the consumers.[30]User interfaceAn automated online assistant, with potential to enhance user interface on shopping sites.The most important factors determining whether customers return to a website are ease of use and the presence of user-friendly features.[31]Usability testing is important for finding problems and improvements in a web site. Methods for evaluating usability include heuristic evaluation, cognitive walkthrough, and user testing. Each technique has its own characteristics and emphasizes different aspects of the user experience.[31]Market shareThe popularity of online shopping continues to erode sales of conventional retailers. For example, Best Buy, the largest retailer of electronics in the U.S. in August 2014 reported its tenth consecutive quarterly dip in sales, citing an increasing shift by consumers to online shopping.[32]There were 242 million people shopping online in China in 2012.[33]For developing countries and low-income households in developed countries, adoption of e-commerce in place of or in addition to conventional methods is limited by a lack of affordable Internet access.AdvantagesConvenienceOnline stores are usually available 24 hours a day, and many consumers in Western countries have Internet access both at work and at home. Other establishments such as Internet cafes, community centers and schools provide internet access as well. In contrast, visiting a conventional retail store requires travel or commuting and costs such as gas, parking, or bus tickets, and must typically take place during business hours. In the event of a problem with the item (e.g., the product was not what the consumer ordered or the product was not satisfactory), consumers are concerned with the ease of returning an item in exchange for the correct product or a refund. Consumers may need to contact the retailer, visit the post office and pay return shipping, and then wait for a replacement or refund. Some online companies have more generous return policies to compensate for the traditional advantage of physical stores. For example, the online shoe retailer Zappos.com includes labels for free return shipping, and does not charge a restocking fee, even for returns which are not the result of merchant error. (Note: In the United Kingdom, online shops are prohibited from charging a restocking fee if the consumer cancels their order in accordance with the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Act 2000).[34]Information and reviewsOnline stores must describe products for sale with text, photos, and multimedia files, whereas in a physical retail store, the actual product and the manufacturer's packaging will be available for direct inspection (which might involve a test drive, fitting, or other experimentation). Some online stores provide or link to supplemental product information, such as instructions, safety procedures, demonstrations, or manufacturer specifications. Some provide background information, advice, or how-to guides designed to help consumers decide which product to buy. Some stores even allow customers to comment or rate their items. There are also dedicated review sites that host user reviews for different products. Reviews and even some blogs give customers the option of shopping for cheaper purchases from all over the world without having to depend on local retailers. In a conventional retail store, clerks are generally available to answer questions. Some online stores have real-time chat features, but most rely on e-mails or phone calls to handle customer questions. Even if an online store is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the customer service team may only be available during regular business hours.Price and selectionOne advantage of shopping online is being able to quickly seek out deals for items or services provided by many different vendors (though some local search engines do exist to help consumers locate products for sale in nearby stores). Search engines, online price comparison services and discovery shopping engines can be used to look up sellers of a particular product or service. Shipping costs (if applicable) reduce the price advantage of online merchandise, though depending on the jurisdiction, a lack of sales tax may compensate for this. Shipping a small number of items, especially from another country, is much more expensive than making the larger shipments bricks-and-mortar retailers order. Some retailers (especially those selling small, high-value items like electronics) offer free shipping on sufficiently large orders. Another major advantage for retailers is the ability to rapidly switch suppliers and vendors without disrupting users' shopping experience.DisadvantagesFraud and security concernsGiven the lack of ability to inspect merchandise before purchase, consumers are at higher risk of fraud than face-to-face transactions. When ordering merchandise online, the item may not work properly, it may have defects, or it might not be the same item pictured in the online photo. Merchants also risk fraudulent purchases if customers are using stolen credit cards or fraudulent repudiation of the online purchase. However, merchants face less risk from physical theft by using a warehouse instead of a retail storefront. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption has generally solved the problem of credit card numbers being intercepted in transit between the consumer and the merchant. However, one must still trust the merchant (and employees) not to use the credit card information subsequently for their own purchases, and not to pass the information to others. Also, hackers might break into a merchant's web site and steal names, addresses and credit card numbers, although the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is intended to minimize the impact of such breaches. Identity theft is still a concern for consumers. A number of high-profile break-ins in the 2000s has prompted some U.S. states to require disclosure to consumers when this happens. Computer security has thus become a major concern for merchants and e-commerce service providers, who deploy countermeasures such as firewalls and anti-virus software to protect their networks. Phishing is another danger, where consumers are fooled into thinking they are dealing with a reputable retailer, when they have actually been manipulated into feeding private information to a system operated by a malicious party. Denial of service attacks are a minor risk for merchants, as are server and network outages.Quality seals can be placed on the Shop web page if it has undergone an independent assessment and meets all requirements of the company issuing the seal. The purpose of these seals is to increase the confidence of online shoppers. However, the existence of many different seals, or seals unfamiliar to consumers, may foil this effort to a certain extent.A number of resources offer advice on how consumers can protect themselves when using online retailer services. These include:Sticking with well-known stores, or attempting to find independent consumer reviews of their experiences; also ensuring that there is comprehensive contact information on the website before using the service, and noting if the retailer has enrolled in industry oversight programs such as a trust mark or a trust seal.Before buying from a new company, evaluating the website by considering issues such as: the professionalism and user-friendliness of the site; whether or not the company lists a telephone number and/or street address along with e-contact information; whether a fair and reasonable refund and return policy is clearly stated; and whether there are hidden price inflators, such as excessive shipping and handling charges.Ensuring that the retailer has an acceptable privacy policy posted. For example, note if the retailer does not explicitly state that it will not share private information with others without consent.Ensuring that the vendor address is protected with SSL (see above) when entering credit card information. If it does the address on the credit card information entry screen will start with "HTTPS".Using strong passwords which do not contain personal information such as the user's name or birthdate. Another option is a "pass phrase," which might be something along the lines: "I shop 4 good a buy!!" These are difficult to hack, since they do not consist of words found in a dictionary, and provides a variety of upper, lower, and special characters. These passwords can be site specific and may be easy to remember.Although the benefits of online shopping are considerable, when the process goes poorly it can create a thorny situation. A few problems that shoppers potentially face include identity theft, faulty products, and the accumulation of spyware. If users are required to put in their credit card information and billing/shipping address and the website is not secure, customer information can be accessible to anyone who knows how to obtain it. Most large online corporations are inventing new ways to make fraud more difficult. However, criminals are constantly responding to these developments with new ways to manipulate the system. Even though online retailers are making efforts to protect consumer information, it is a constant fight to maintain the lead. It is advisable to be aware of the most current technology and scams to protect consumer identity and finances. Product delivery is also a main concern of online shopping. Most companies offer shipping insurance in case the product is lost or damaged. Some shipping companies will offer refunds or compensation for the damage, but this is up to their discretion.Lack of full cost disclosureThe lack of full cost disclosure may also be problematic. While it may be easy to compare the base price of an item online, it may not be easy to see the total cost up front. Additional fees such as shipping are often not visible until the final step in the checkout process. The problem is especially evident with cross-border purchases, where the cost indicated at the final checkout screen may not include additional fees that must be paid upon delivery such as duties and brokerage. Some services such as the Canadian-based Wishabi attempts to include estimates of these additional cost,[35]but nevertheless, the lack of general full cost disclosure remains a concern.PrivacyPrivacy of personal information is a significant issue for some consumers. Many consumers wish to avoid spam and telemarketing which could result from supplying contact information to an online merchant. In response, many merchants promise to not use consumer information for these purposes, Many websites keep track of consumer shopping habits in order to suggest items and other websites to view. Brick-and-mortar stores also collect consumer information. Some ask for a shopper's address and phone number at checkout, though consumers may refuse to provide it. Many larger stores use the address information encoded on consumers' credit cards (often without their knowledge) to add them to a catalog mailing list. This information is obviously not accessible to the merchant when paying in cash or through a bank (money transfer, in which case there is also proof of payment).Product suitabilityThis section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)Many successful purely virtual companies deal with digital products, (including information storage, retrieval, and modification), music, movies, office supplies, education, communication, software, photography, and financial transactions. Other successful marketers use drop shipping or affiliate marketing techniques to facilitate transactions of tangible goods without maintaining real inventory. Some non-digital products have been more successful than others for online stores. Profitable items often have a high value-to-weight ratio, they may involve embarrassing purchases, they may typically go to people in remote locations, and they may have shut-ins as their typical purchasers. Items which can fit in a standard mailbox—such as music CDs, DVDs and books—are particularly suitable for a virtual marketer.Products such as spare parts, both for consumer items like washing machines and for industrial equipment like centrifugal pumps, also seem good candidates for selling online. Retailers often need to order spare parts specially, since they typically do not stock them at consumer outlets—in such cases, e-commerce solutions in spares do not compete with retail stores, only with other ordering systems. A factor for success in this niche can consist of providing customers with exact, reliable information about which part number their particular version of a product needs, for example by providing parts lists keyed by serial number. Products less suitable for e-commerce include products that have a low value-to-weight ratio, products that have a smell, taste, or touch component, products that need trial fittings—most notably clothing—and products where colour integrity appears important. Nonetheless, some web sites have had success delivering groceries and clothing sold through the internet is big business in the U.S.AggregationHigh-volume websites, such as Yahoo!, Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more,and eBay, offer hosting services for online stores to all size retailers. These stores are presented within an integrated navigation framework, sometimes known as virtual shopping malls or online marketplaces.Impact of reviews on consumer behaviourOne of the great benefits of online shopping is the ability to read product reviews, written either by experts or fellow online shoppers. The Nielsen Company conducted a survey in March 2010 and polled more than 27,000 Internet users in 55 markets from the Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East, North America, and South America to look at questions such as "How do consumers shop online?", "What do they intend to buy?", "How do they use various online shopping web pages?", and the impact of social media and other factors that come into play when consumers are trying to decide how to spend their money on which product or service. According to the research,[36]reviews on electronics (57%) such as DVD players, cellphones, or PlayStations, and so on, reviews on cars (45%), and reviews on software (37%) play an important role in influencing consumers who tend to make purchases online. Furthermore, 40% of online shoppers indicate that they would not even buy electronics without consulting online reviews first.In addition to online reviews, peer recommendations on online shopping pages or social media websites play a key role[37]for online shoppers when they are researching future purchases.[38]90% of all purchases made are influenced by social media.[39]A retailer or a shop is a business that presents a selection of goods and offers to trade or sell them to customers for money or other goods. Shopping is an activity in which a customer browses the available goods or services presented by one or more retailers with the intent to purchase a suitable selection of them. In some contexts it may be considered a leisure activity as well as an economic one.In modern days customer focus is more transferred towards online shopping; worldwide people order products from different regions and online retailers deliver their products to their homes, offices or wherever they want. The B2C (business to consumer) process has made it easy for consumers to select any product online from a retailer's website and have it delivered to the consumer within no time. The consumer does not need to consume his energy by going out to the stores and saves his time and cost of travelling.A woman shopping at a shopping mall in the United States in December 2005The shopping experience can range from delightful to terrible, based on a variety of factors including how the customer is treated, convenience, the type of goods being purchased, and mood.[1]The shopping experience can also be influenced by other shoppers. For example, research from a field experiment found that male and female shoppers who were accidentally touched from behind by other shoppers left a store earlier than people who had not been touched and evaluated brands more negatively, resulting in the Accidental Interpersonal Touch effect.[2]According to a 2000 report, in the U.S. state of New York, women purchase 80% of all consumer goods and influence 80% of health-care decisions.[3]Contents1 History1.1 Ancient era1.2 Consumer shopping1.3 Department stores2 Shopping venues2.1 Shopping hubs2.2 Stores2.2.1 Home shopping2.2.2 Neighborhood shopping2.2.3 Party shopping3 Shopping activity3.1 Shopping seasons4 Pricing and negotiation4.1 "Window shopping"5 Utility Cycling6 See also7 ReferencesHistoryAncient eraIn ancient Greece, the agora served as a marketplace where merchants kept stalls or shops to sell their goods. Ancient Rome utilized a similar marketplace known as the forum. For example, there was Trajan's Market with tabernae that served as retailing units.Shopping lists are known to have been used by Romans, as one was discovered near Hadrian's wall dated back to 75–125 CE written for a soldier.[4]Fairs and markets were established to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. People would shop for goods at a weekly market in nearby towns.Consumer shoppingBernard Mandeville's work The Fable of the Bees, which justified conspicuous consumption.The modern phenomenon of shopping is closely linked to the emergence of the consumer society in the 18th century. Over the course of the two centuries from 1600 onwards, the purchasing power of the average Englishman steadily rose. Sugar consumption doubled in the first half of the 18th century and the availability of a wide range of luxury goods, including tea and cotton saw a sustained increase.[5]Marketplaces dating back to the Middle Ages, expanded as shopping centres, such as the New Exchange, opened in 1609 by Robert Cecil in the Strand. Shops started to become important as places for Londoners to meet and socialise and became popular destinations alongside the theatre. Restoration London also saw the growth of luxury buildings as advertisements for social position with speculative architects like Nicholas Barbon and Lionel Cranfield.Much pamphleteering of the time was devoted to justifying conspicuous consumption and private vice for luxury goods for the greater public good. This then scandalous line of thought caused great controversy with the publication of Bernard Mandeville's influential work Fable of the Bees in 1714, in which he argued that a country's prosperity ultimately lay in the self-interest of the consumer.[6]Josiah Wedgewood's pottery, a status symbol of consumerism in the late 18th century.These trends were vastly accelerated in the 18th century, as rising prosperity and social mobility increased the number of people with disposable income for consumption. Important shifts included the marketing of goods for individuals as opposed to items for the household, and the new status of goods as status symbols, related to changes in fashion and desired for aesthetic appeal, as opposed to just their utility. The pottery inventor and entrepreneur, Josiah Wedgewood, pioneered the use of marketing techniques to influence and manipulate the direction of the prevailing tastes.[7]As the century wore on a tremendous variety of goods and manufactures were steadily made available for the urban middle and upper classes. This growth in consumption led to the rise of 'shopping' - a proliferation of retail shops selling particular goods and the acceptance of shopping as a cultural activity in its own right. Specific streets and districts became devoted to retail, including the Strand and Picadilly in London.[5]The first display windows in shops were installed in the late 18th century in London. Retailer Francis Place was one of the first to experiment with this new retailing method at his tailoring establishment in Charing Cross, where he fitted the shop-front with large plate glass windows. Although this was condemned by many, he defended his practice in his memoirs, claiming that he:sold from the window more goods...than paid journeymen's wages and the expenses of housekeeping.[8]Retailers designed attractive shop fronts to entice patronage, using bright lights, advertisements and attractively arranged goods. The goods on offer were in a constant state of change, due to the frenetic change in fashions. A foreign visitor thought that London was "A world of gold and silver plate, then pearls and gems shedding their dazzling lustre, home manufactures of the most exquisite taste, an ocean of rings, watches, chains, bracelets, perfumes, ready-dresses, ribbons, lace, bonnets, and fruits from all the zones of the habitable world".[5]Department storesLe Bon Marché, founded in Paris, offered a wide variety of goods in "departments" inside one building, from 1851.The next stage in shopping was the transition from 'single-function' shops selling one type of good, to the department store where a large variety of goods were sold. As economic growth, fueled by the Industrial Revolution at the turn of the 19th-century, steadily expanded, the affluent bourgeois middle-class grew in size and wealth. This urbanized social group was the catalyst for the emergence of the retail revolution of the period. The first reliably dated department store to be established, was Harding, Howell & Co, which opened in 1796 on Pall Mall, London.[9]This venture was described as being a public retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different departments. This pioneering shop was closed down in 1820 when the business partnership was dissolved. Department stores were established on a large scale from the 1840s and 50s, in France, the United Kingdom and the USShopping venuesShopping hubsA larger commercial zone can be found in many cities, more formally called a central business district, but more commonly called "downtown" in the United States, or in Arab cities, souks. Shopping hubs, or shopping centers, are collections of stores; that is a grouping of several businesses.A group of women window shopping in Toronto, Canada in 1937Typical examples include shopping malls, town squares, flea markets and bazaars.A shopping hub or centre, is a collection of retail, entertainment and service stores designed to serve products and services to the surrounding region. Traditionally, shopping hubs were called bazaars or marketplaces which were generally an assortment of stalls lining streets selling a large variety of goods.[10] The modern shopping centre is now different from its antecedents, the stores are commonly in individual buildings or compressed into one large structure (Mall).[11] The first modern shopping mall was The Country Club Plaza in Kansas City which opened in 1922, from there the first enclosed mall was designed by Victor Gruen and opened in 1956 as Southdale Centre in Edina, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. Malls peaked in America in the 1980s-1990s when many larger malls (more than 37,000 sq m in size) were built, attracting consumers from within a 32 km radius with their luxurious department stores.[12] There are different types of malls around the world, the Superregional malls are very large malls that contain at least five department stores and 300 shops, this mall can appeal to a broad radius (up to a 160-km). A regional mall can contain at least two department stores or "anchor stores".[13] The smaller malls are often called open-air strip centres or mini-marts and are typically attached to a grocery store or supermarket. The smaller malls are less likely to include the same features of a large mall such as an indoor concourse, but are beginning to evolve to become enclosed to comply with all weather and customer preferences.[12]StoresStores are divided into multiple categories of stores which sell a selected set of goods or services. Usually they are tiered by target demographics based on the disposable income of the shopper. They can be tiered from cheap to pricey.Some shops sell secondhand goods. Often the public can also sell goods to such shops. In other cases, especially in the case of a nonprofit shop, the public donates goods to these shops, commonly known as thrift stores in the United States, charity shops in the United Kingdom, or op shops in Australia and New Zealand. In give-away shops goods can be taken for free. In antique shops, the public can find goods that are older and harder to find. Sometimes people are broke and borrow money from a pawn shop using an item of value as collateral. College students are known to resell books back through college textbook bookstores. Old used items are often distributed through surplus stores.Various types of retail stores that specialize in the selling of goods related to a theme include bookstores, boutiques, candy shops, liquor stores, gift shops, hardware stores, hobby stores, pet stores, pharmacies, sex shops and supermarkets.Other stores such as big-box stores, hypermarkets, convenience stores, department stores, general stores, dollar stores sell a wider variety of products not horizontally related to each other.Home shoppingMain article: Home shoppingHome mail delivery systems and modern technology (such as television, telephones, and the Internet), in combination with electronic commerce, allow consumers to shop from home. There are three main types of home shopping: mail or telephone ordering from catalogs; telephone ordering in response to advertisements in print and electronic media (such as periodicals, TV and radio); and online shopping. Online shopping has completely redefined the way people make their buying decisions; the Internet provides access to a lot of information about a particular product, which can be looked at, evaluated, and comparison-priced at any given time. Online shopping allows the buyer to save the time and expense, which would have been spent traveling to the store or mall. According to technology and research firm Forrester, mobile purchases or mcommerce will account for 49% of ecommerce, or $252 billion in sales, by 2020[14]Neighborhood shoppingConvenience stores are common in North America, and are often called "bodegas" in Spanish-speaking communities or "dépanneurs" in French-speaking ones. Sometimes peddlers and ice cream trucks pass through neighborhoods offering goods and services. Also, garage sales are a common form of second hand resale.Neighbourhood shopping areas and retailers give value to a community by providing various social and community services (like a library), and a social place to meet. Neighbourhood retailing differs from other types of retailers such as destination retailers because of the difference in offered products and services, location and popularity.[15] Neighbourhood retailers include stores such as; Food shops/marts, dairies, Pharmacies, Dry cleaners, Hairdressers/barbers, Bottle shops, Cafés and take-away shops . Destination retailers include stores such as; Gift shops, Antique shops, Pet groomers, Engravers, Tattoo parlour, Bicycle shops, Herbal dispensary clinics, Art galleries, Office Supplies and framers. The neighbourhood retailers sell essential goods and services to the residential area they are located in. There can be many groups of neighbourhood retailers in different areas of a region or city, but destination retailers are often part of shopping malls where the numbers of consumers is higher than that of a neighbourhood retail area. The destination retailers are becoming more prevalent as they can provide a community with more than the essentials, they offer an experience, and a wider scope of goods and services.Party shoppingThe party plan is a method of marketing products by hosting a social event, using the event to display and demonstrate the product or products to those gathered, and then to take orders for the products before the gathering ends.Shopping activityShopping seasonsShopping frenzies are periods of time where a burst of spending occurs, typically near holidays in the United States, with Christmas shopping being the biggest shopping spending season, starting as early as October and continuing until after Christmas.Some religions regard such spending seasons as being against their faith and dismiss the practice. Many contest the over-commercialization and the response by stores that downplay the shopping season often cited in the War on Christmas.The National Retail Federation (NRF) also highlights the importance of back-to-school shopping for retailers which comes second behind holiday shopping, when buyers often buy clothing and school supplies for their children.[16] In 2006, Americans spend over $17 billion on their children, according to a NRF survey.[citation needed]Seasonal shopping consists of buying the appropriate clothing for the particular season. In winter people bundle up in warm layers and coats to keep warm, while in summer people wear less clothing to stay cooler in the heat. Seasonal shopping now revolves a lot around holiday sales and buying more for less. Stores need to get rid of all of their previous seasonal clothing to make room for the new trends of the upcoming season.[17] The end-of-season sales usually last a few weeks with prices lowering further towards the closing of the sale. During sales items can be discounted from 10% up to as much as 50%, with the biggest reduction sales occurring at the end of the season. Holiday shopping periods are extending their sales further and further with holidays such as Black Friday becoming a month-long event stretching promotions across November . These days shopping doesn't stop once the mall closes, as people have more access to stores and their sales than ever before with the help of the internet and apps.[18] Today many people research their purchases online to find the cheapest and best deal with one third of all shopping searches on Google happen between 10:00 pm and 4:00 am.[19] Shoppers are now spending more time consulting different sources before making a final purchasing decision. Shoppers once used an average of five sources for information before making a purchase, but numbers have risen to as high as 12 sources in 2014.[20]Pricing and negotiationThe pricing technique used by most retailers is cost-plus pricing. This involves adding a markup amount (or percentage) to the retailers' cost. Another common technique is manufacturers suggested list pricing. This simply involves charging the amount suggested by the manufacturer and usually printed on the product by the manufacturer.In Western countries, retail prices can be referred to as psychological prices or odd prices: a little less than a round number, e.g. $6.95. In Chinese societies, prices are generally either a round number or sometimes some lucky number. This creates price points.Often, prices are fixed and price discrimination can lead to a bargaining situation often called haggling, a negotiation about the price. Economists see this as determining how the transaction's total economic surplus will be divided between consumers and producers. Neither party has a clear advantage because the threat of no sale exists, in which case the surplus would vanish for both.When shopping online, it can be more difficult to negotiate price given that you are not directly interacting with a sales person. Some consumers use price comparison websites to find the best price and/or to make a decision about who or where to buy from to save money."Window shopping"Women peer through a shop window on a rainy dayWindow shopping in the rain"Window shopping" is a term referring to the browsing of goods by a consumer with no intent to purchase, either as a recreational activity or to plan a later purchase.Showrooming, the practice of examining merchandise in a traditional brick and mortar retail store without purchasing it, but then shopping online to find a lower price for the same item, has become an increasingly prevalent problem for traditional retailers as a result of online competitors, so much so that some have begun to take measures to combat it.[21

This is a tough one. With new money coming into the world of money transfer/cross border payments, it is indeed a struggle to survive.Full Disclosure: This article was originally published in my blog at https://faisalkhan.com/blogI did a presentation on this long ago (The original presentation can be downloaded from here: Uberization of Money Transfer: 12 Questions every small and medium, independent money transfer operator should ask themselves). For months I’ve been thinking of doing an updated version of the presentation into an article, so here it is. It is a long article, but if you’re from the industry, you will then most likely understand what I have stated and appreciate the solutions.tl;dr: There is hope. Let me assure you of that. There is a 100% hope. Read through the article.The world of money transfer is getting competitive by the minute. Not only is the landscape filled with multiple players, the time, material and monetary resources required to keep abreast of things, is taxing enough for many.The ProblemsThere are 1000s of small and medium, independent money transfer businesses around the world. Most of them are struggling and the ever-present threat of shuttering down is a very serious issue they face.Here are just some of the issues that small money transfer businesses have to deal with:Costs of maintaining licensesThe money required to expand sales & marketing effortsMoney and human resources required to invest and keep up with technologyInvesting in better customer supportEver increasing compliance costsOnline presenceMaintaining access to bankingThe ever-present threat of being de-risked by your bankLicense coverage in other parts of the country and worldLimited payout networkNot being able to expand the type of customers (B2B, B2C, B2B2C payments, for example)Bringing value-added services like bill payment, mobile top-upsLimited pre-funding moneyManaging all this with the daily fire-fighting that is going onHow to compete against the big-guns like Transferwise, Xoom, Western Union, MoneyGram, etc.Technical integration with other players, payment networks and payment systemsTrainingBrand management, etc.If you’re from the industry, then you know, just by reading the above-mentioned list would make anyone’s blood pressure go low. Depression is a real threat (and I’m not joking here).Money transmitters and other MSBs experience real fear of de-risking while banks and credit unions experience what could be imagined fear of banking MSBs.Credit: From: Use Your BSA Risk Assessment to Build Banking Relationships byMark Stetler — Co-founder and CEO RegSmart as appearing in David Landsman Consulting — Daily Digest Newsletter — 26 March, 2019Link: https://www.amlservices.us/The AnalogyI always give this example, so think about the following. If I were to ask you how many banks in the United States, the approximate answer is about 8,000 (give or take). This includes all sorts and types. Large, Small, Community Banks, Credit Unions, etc.How many of them are Tier I banks? with say assets over $500 Billion. The answer might be 10 or 20, or even 50, but let’s round it up to 100. So we have 100 Tier I banks in the US. This leaves us with 7,900 Tier II and Tier III banks.Second question: How many Tier II banks in the US? Tier II would represent assets between $10 Billion to less than $500 Billion. The answer this time around might say 50 or 75 banks. Let’s again round this off to say 200 Tier II banks. So now we have 7,700 Tier III banks left.Tier III banks are banks with assets size under $10 Billion. This represents the majority of small and medium banks in the United States. From one-branch, one-city banks to a few dozen branches and a few states.Now that we have set this viewpoint, let me ask you the following questions:Who provides the software and services for CORE Banking to the Tier I Banks? Answer: they themselves. In most of the cases, these large banks use their own bespoke software, developed and refined over the years. Some of them use vendors like Temenos of Misys, etc.Who provides the software for Tier II and Tier III? Answer: The commercial vendors like Jack Henry & Associates, FIS Global, FiServ, Temenos, Misys (now called Finastra), etc.For most of the 7,700 banks, the technology part is handled by the Big 3 cartel. Yes, it is a cartel, you can listen to this podcast to learn more about how the CORE Banking Cartel in the United States operates:(Around The Coin — Episode 159: The Oligopoly in American Banking that no one talks about).Who Serves Money Transfer Businesses?So, coming to the Money Transfer Businesses, how many of them are there around the world? My guess let say 50 money transfer companies per country (leveling out), and about 200 countries and territories world over, would yield approximately, 10,000 money transfer operators.Again, how many are Tier I Money Transfer Operators (MTOs)? Those that are licensed in multiple countries, that operate and channel more than $10 Billion per year? Probably 10? 20? 30? players. Round it off to 100. So, 100 MTOs.How many of them are Tier II Money Transfer Operators? Those licensed in single &/or multiple geographies, but perhaps operate between $1 Billion to less than $10 Billion? Again, the same number about 100 or so Tier II. Let’s quadruple it to 400 Tier II MTOs.So we then have about 9,500 Tier III MTOs. Licensed in a single market. In some case licensed in multiple locations. Processing well under $1 Billion per year. In most cases, limited geography, limited to a few stores (if at all) and serving a very limited corridor network.Here is the multi-million dollar question: Who are the Jack Henrys or FIS Global or FiServs to the 9,500 Money Transfer Operators around the globe.The answer: No one.That’s right. As a Tier III Money Transfer Operator, you have to fend for yourself. There is no one on your team. You have to walk the journey alone, and fight all the battles, alone. Obstacles plenty, help, practically none.Who’s taking care of you? No one …yet!This is the problem that obsessed me for years. Truth be told, it is one of the problems that has obsessed me. Other is real-time (read: instant), low-value, affordable, cross-border payments. Anyhow, I digress. So before I give the solution (or you could just scroll down), let me amplify the problem.Q1: How close or distant are you from your competition?Are you at par with your competition? Are you close? If we talk about established players like Western Union or MoneyGram, how are you positioned against them? What about the de novo players like Transferwise, Xoom, WorldFirst, etc.? If you are a Tier III player, it is no secret, you envy the established players. You not only envy the de novo players but secretly despise them for pushing the prices lower.Let’s just come out with it: You hate them! Deep down inside, you blame them for your diminishing profits. The truth is, you are too scared to admit the reality yourself. That with the competition, prices are falling. Eventually, they will fall way below the threshold you have marked, in order to survive. This is how the industry works. New entrants bring downward pressure. This is no hidden secret. In fact, you already know about this. Everyone knows about this. The World Bank Group publishes a report literally every quarter for the last 10+ years, highlighting this: Cost of sending money is going down.The World Bank has set a goal to bring the average cost of remittances down to 3% (300 basis points) by the year 2030. Companies like Ripple have said publicly, that if they are not able to bring the price of cross-border money transfer down to 30 basis points (0.3%) — they (Ripple) would have failed in their mission. (See this fireside chat, I had with Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple in 2018 at Money 20/20 Asia in Singapore)Faisal Khan having a fireside chat with Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple at Money 20/20 Asia (in Singapore) 2018.In another 11 years (by 2030), the price of sending money (on average, worldwide) will be 3%. This means in many of the competitive corridors (US-India, UAE-Pakistan, Saudi Arabia-Bangladesh, Hong Kong-Philippines, US-Mexico) the price of sending money will be a few 10s in basis points. Definitely under 1% and most likely under 0.5%.How will you survive then? Or will you even be in business? Will you still blame the incumbents and de novo players?Q2: How strong and prominent is your online social media presence?The world is moving online. If you disagree. Stop reading this and go back to what you were doing.Let me give my own internal study example. Let’s take a market like the United States and pick any particular segment, say, Latin America. This is how the figures for US-LatAm market looked like in 2017:84% of all money transfers were at an off-line, physical location (non-banks)6% of all money transfers were online, by NBFIs (Non-Banking Financial Institutions), i.e. your MSBs / MTOs / MSOs10% of all money transfers were done by banks (be it online, offline, at a branch location, over the phone, internet banking, etc.)In 2010 the online figure was less than 2%. What do you think the online figure will be in 2020? by 2025? and by 2030?Here are my guessesBy 2020: it will be at about 8%By 2025: 15%, andBy 2030: 40% and aboveWestern Union is investing heavily in Western Union online and realizing that the online platform is the next-generation platform to conduct business on, in light of the diminishing physical agent network. WU recognizes this by a story someone once told me (I cannot verify the claim, so if anyone can, please let me know). The story goes that in every Western Union Board meeting, they bring a large printed panaflex poster of a company that has gone out of business because it was complacent. Names such as Kodak, Blockbuster and America Online have commonly been used. It is a reminder to all those on the board, that they have a fiduciary duty towards their shareholders that the company must survive. The company must innovate. The company must not become complacent and one day find out that it is too late to make the turn. Here is a slightly dated summary article of an Earnings Call by WU in Q2 (2017) that I wrote. Compare that summary to Q4 2018 Summary and you will notice, that online is a huge part of the success path.Look at the following two screens from the earnings call presentation:Notice that Westernunion.com is still showing strong growth of 25% (per quarter). Here is another slide from the presentation:Driving digital growth and expansion is their #1 priority for 2019. In this day and age, where banks are derisking themselves and malls are closing down, where the cost of compliance is going high, where cash is frowned upon, agents are struggling and demanding more compensation for declining commissions, where do you think all this is going?WU knows the end game.That may be in 10 years, the size of the physical agents market will perhaps be reduced by 50% Where do you think all that reduced traffic will go to send money? They will go online! WU will eventually cannibalize their Agent network for the online network. This will not be offline vs online. It will be a hybrid solution for some time to come and the online will eventually win. You can read the Western Union Fourth Quarter 2018 Report (PDF) here.By merely having a Twitter account or Facebook page, one does not acquire customers. Most of the Tier III Money Transfer Businesses don’t even have any active social media presence. A very large majority, simply don’t have any presence at all.How many customers are you signing up that came through social media? If the answer is none, you’re dead! You just don’t know it. You cannot just invest in social media and expect everything to be smooth tomorrow. It takes months and months (if not years) of hard work before your online brand reputation even starts to take shape. A classic case of a job well done, that literally took years to establish is XpressMoney. Look at their Twitter feed and it is one of the best ones I follow (and I follow and monitor a lot of feeds). @XpressMoney makes their feed a right mix of work, family, fun and knowledge balance. A lot many money transfer business players in the space have taken their social media cue from @XpressMoney.Q3: How much money are you spending on online advertising and affiliate programs to solicit clients?Sign-up for an affiliate of Transferwise and you can earn serious money up to $ 50 for every user you refer to them. TW’s affiliate program has 1,000s of participants, churning our content on the internet in the hopes of catching new clients. Transferwise is okay with paying out $50 commission to you, for acquiring a new customer. It is estimated that the cost of acquiring a new customer for Western Union or MoneyGram is less than $15 per customer.For others, they are not so lucky. Economies of scale don’t benefit them. They have to fight and up the game to win customers. It is estimated by various analysts that the actual cost of acquisition of a new client by Transferwise is perhaps as high as $75 per customer (if you include costs like advertising, etc.)Tier III providers have it worse. They are already cash strapped. Can you afford to pay an affiliate $50 per every new customer acquired? Even if you did. How much will you earn per customer? $10? $15? $25. How many months before the customer becomes profitable for you? By merely having a Twitter account or Facebook page, one does not acquire customers. Most of the Tier III Money Transfer Businesses don’t even have any active social media presence. A very large majority, don’t have any presence.You have to have a social media strategy and then spend money to execute that strategy. One huge problem with small Tier III providers is that to save money, they will attempt to do everything themselves. They will embark and try to launch their own social media presence and suck at it. They will spend money on ads without knowing how online ads work and blow large sums of money and not get any results. All this will lead to more frustration and throwing in the towel.What happens after this? The natural knee-jerk reaction is to blame everyone else, but yourself for the failures. You need help, but you can’t afford it.Q4: How much money are you spending on your front-end and back-end technology?Relationship building is core differentiator as to why people do business with you (amongst other factors), but a lot of that relies on technology. Technology is the core internal differentiator. Without a solid technology stack, most Money Transfer Operators struggle to make things work. Ask anyone if their IT team is good, and the reply I always hear is “My IT team is the best”. This could not be further from the truth. Whilst, IT teams are generally good. They are not the best. Tier III simply cannot afford to hire nor retain the best of IT.The economics just do not work out.Keeping pace with the technological advances literally requires a small team (read: army). Today you need information architects, API specialists, database specialists, cyber/network security specialists, full-stack developers, UI/UX specialists, and mobile application programmers. Small money transfer operators sometimes live paycheck to paycheck or struggle to save. Asking them to invest $100,000s towards technology investment year-in, year-out, without stopping, would be an economic nightmare leading to bankruptcy.Even with the various vendors out there in the market, who purportedly are looking after your interests (they are not), you don’t save much. Every feature request, every feature unlocking, every bit of report generation or backup exercises, etc. are added billable hours or an increase in the monthly subscription.While Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers have reduced the burden of IT a lot, they don’t necessarily solve the operational quagmire you are in. Death of your business is assured if you do not invest in IT/Technology. Compliance requires more automation and controls. So do your regulators. So do your banking and payment network partners. And, more importantly, so do your customers.With very limited resources, it is no small wonder that almost every small Money Transfer Operator I speak to are struggling on this front and rarely do they admit to others.As friends, I happen to get this candid admission out of them.Q5: How many beneficiary countries do you have access to whilst still being competitive?Most Money Transfer Operators who are classified as Tier III, operate and serve in very specific ethnicity and geography. Some do a few more as they go along, but for a large swath, Tier III MTOs know their niche. For years, they have been operating/serving their focused market. As more de novo players have entered, they now slowly see their corridors being threatened. In addition to this, Tier III operators also lack the time, resources and capital to expand on to other markets. I’ve personally known providers who say are active in Bangladesh and Pakistan and when I ask them why they don’t expand to India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, they always claim they don’t have the bandwidth for it.Same with Tier III providers who service Tanzania and Kenya, why don’t they branch out to Ghana, Rwanda, and Ghana. Same variation of the story always. Don’t have the capital or the technology stack to expand out. It is not as if the Tier III providers are oblivious about aggregators, but they keep citing and I believe them, that in most of the time, aggregators are not able to offer a competitive rate for them to do business.What most Tier III providers don’t realize is that the fewer the corridors, the more risk their business is prone to. It is the proverbial equivalent of putting all your eggs in one basket. Should a corridor go down (for whatever reason), it will have a significant impact on business. Hence, expanding and spreading your risk across multiple markets is always a better choice.Expansion is easy. A competitively priced expansion is not, and, herein lies the problem. How do you expand to other corridors with a price point that is competitive with what the customers are paying right now for those corridors?Q6: Are you considering expanding your licenses to other states & territories?Applying for licensing is expensive when you’re small. Once you have enough traction going, and your market research supports expansion, then, by all means, do it. Reality is most Tier III Money Service Operators (MSOs) sit on the fence when it comes to expansion. Getting additional licensing means committing more human, technological and capital resources to achieve that goal. An option that most Tier III Money Transfer Businesses just can’t exercise.Even if they do get licensed then the corollary of marketing and sales needs to be addressed. Soon enough you realize this is a chicken and the egg situation on so many fronts.You should take a cue from the world of travel agents, or freight forwarders or even the real estate industry. They get access to each other’s markets by leveraging the power of an association. A travel agent joins a hotel or an airline network that enables wider market access. Freight forwarders discovered this years back and that is how freight moves around the world today. The real-estate industry hinges its success behind the Multiple Listing Service(or MLS) which allows a home buyer or seller to gain access to properties that otherwise were not in their real-estate agents geographic or marketing reach.Some examples of collaborative networksIndividual licensing expansion can be a huge capital burden (not to mention, an operating resources burden as well). However, this load can be lightened by leverage or pooling in your license with those of others. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. The MLS success hinged on this. Shared sales are better than no sales.Q7: If your geographic reached expanded by getting licenses in other states, how many more clients do you think you would be able to get?It is always great to daydream… Here are some great questions to daydream over:What if we had a New York license?What if we had a Texas license?What if we had money transmitter licenses for the New England states?What would happen if tomorrow we suddenly had access to the California market?What if we could get a Pan-European license to pick up customers from all over Europe?These are questions you should be asking yourself all the time. Once you’ve asked the questions, the next goal should be to understand the market itself.How big is the market?What sort of opportunity exists?How many players dominate?Which corridors present an opportunity that we could tackle remotely?What are our existing customers saying about these markets?What has our marketing research and surveys told us?Do economies of scale kick in, should we expand to these additional markets?What sort of operational and back-office burden does it create?What do the income estimates say?How profitable will the routes be?What sort of market can we capture and how?Over what period?What marketing budget would be required?How much more additional working capital would be required?Many money transfer operators would like to expand, and believe me, expansion is easy and doable, but you have to do your own market research and study on the feasibility. The merchantability of your expansion plans is something only you know best. The sooner you start devoting time towards the completion of these go-to-market studies, the sooner you would be ready (not to mention confident) in executing such opportunities and actuallyexpanding.Do it.Remember the 5 P’s. Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance!If you are serious about understanding how to go about this, I wrote a slightly tangential article called Architecting a mobile wallet that customers want. You can read on how to map the user journey and conduct surveys, etc. If nothing, it will perhaps give you some form of semblance on how to start thinking about market research & survey.Q8: Is your ability to expand restricted by the lack of capital?Access to capital, i.e. money is a core tenant for any business. Money Transfer Businesses are no exception. Everyone seems to be stuck on a line of thinking that they need to come up with money in order to expand. Traditional thinking would say yes, but if you can recalibrate your mind to think differently, there are many innovative ways to expand, without the need for large amounts of capital injection.Your license is your leverage. You existing markets, customers, your domain knowledge alone are your leverages.What good would a blog post be without a song about money! This is how sadly every independent Money Service Operator that I know of is thinking (a great song called “Gotta Get My Hands on Some Money” by Fatback).In all seriousness, if this is what you are obsessed over, it is a good thing, but direct the obsession towards earning that money with what you have right now, rather than getting money (magically) from somewhere. This is what sales and growth hacking is all about. Finding innovative methods to pump the numbers with minimal or no investment whatsoever.There is a reason I used the word recalibrate your mind. Let go of the traditional approaches and think How, with what you have, can you trade?Capital is not the limiting factor here.Your ability to think-outside-the-box-and-do-deals is.Q9: How are you adding new products & services?Many small and medium MTOs are for years doing the same thing day-in, day-out. Remittance. People sending money to People. Mostly family remittances. Nothing changes over the years. The MSOs become so complacent and ingrained in what they are offering, that I personally think, they are blindsided by the options around them. You need not scale horizontally. You need to look vertically. What are the value-added payments you can offer to your existing clients?Value-Added Chain for P2P Remittances PaymentsThe above is an example diagram of what a typical value-added payment stack looks like in P2P payments. This stack is not etched in stone, so feel free to modify it as per your availability. The goal is to look at payments in a different light and understand what additions, improvements, enhancements can be done.In addition to the above stack, there are also other payment types you may need to look at. Business-to-Consumer payments, (typically denoted as B2C) and this could be a consumer paying a business or vice versa.Start looking at handling business payments. What would it mean from an on-boarding point of view? From a compliance point of view? From a partner-network point of view? There is a HUGE difference between the $630 Billion remittance industry and $100+ Trillion B2B payments industry.To put that into perspective…P2P vs B2B Market Size for Cross Border PaymentsThe P2P market has about 8,000–10,000 players (not counting banks) and the B2B market has about less than 750 players (again, not counting banks).Where do you think more opportunities lie? It does not have to be either/or. You can comfortably service both markets with slight adjustments on your front & back office.Companies big and small today are trading with each other across border lines more than ever before, thereby increasing the need for cross-border payments. The world is flats, but the payments landscape is not quite flat yet.Making your systems ready to handle a multitude of payments will be to your advantage.Q10: It is time to start embracing cryptocurrency?I get a lot of flak for being a proponent of cryptocurrency. I do have my reservations and opinions (like everyone else) of which cryptocurrency is good, which isn’t. Which one is best suited for task X and which is best for task Y. Despite all this, and looking past the punters and speculators or the myopic articles that keep blaming cryptocurrency for all the ills like money laundering, illicit financing, financing of terrorism, etc. — there is the promise of a technology that is slowly reshaping how we interact with money.Investing time in understanding cryptocurrency today will not make you like a fool tomorrow. You don’t have to start big. Go very small. Open multiple cryptocurrency wallets, load them up with $10 and send pocket change across the world. See how the system acts and behaves. Until you don’t try it — you will never get the hang of it.I did this short video on the same topic. Why an understanding of cryptocurrency is critical for your future survival.Admittedly many people that I have had candid discussions with are afraid of it — because they don’t understand it. They need not be. No one was ever born with all the knowledge. Start reading an article once a day and start watching a video once a day. Imagine your knowledge and understanding after say 6 months.Learning about cryptocurrency does not mean your money services business will be dealing in it. Just because you are learning how to bake a cake, does not imply that you will become a bakery next, same goes with cryptocurrency.Play with it. No regulator will stop you. No regulator will fine you. No regulator will give you an enforcement order. As long as you keep this to your personal left, and as a small pilot project, you have nothing to worry about.An investment made in learning today is a whole lot better than being oblivious about it.Is there hope?Of course, there is hope. It would be pointless to write such a log article and not give hope.Hope comes from collaboration. Leverage the strength of each other in the network that collaborates together.I’m reminded by this scene in the movie Shawshank Redemption, in a scene with Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins.When you are faced with dwindling prospects, even thinking rationally and straight becomes an issue. When you see de novo players around you raising tens of millions of dollars, it is difficult not to be jealous.Self-pity starts to creep in. Life is suddenly not fair. You start blaming yourself that you’ve been dealt with a sour hand.There is a saying by the German philosopher Nietzsche (I promise this is the last quote I will use, I think).Stop!Don’t go there. If you stop looking into the darkness of the situation you may be in and look at the bright side, there is so much, you, as an individual money transfer operator can do.Now I will tell you, how to go about it.The SolutionThe solution is simple. It is all about Collaboration and Leveraging the combined resources of each other.Let me explain. The non-technical explanation can be summarized in the diagram below. If the 7,700 or so small and medium money transfer operators of the world unite together, there is immense power in the network they create.Whilst such diagrams as the one above may seem cute for purposes of illustration, you must look through and understand the concept. The concept is saying if small players unite. If small players organize themselves and are not afraid of talking to their competitors (of the same size), if they come together as one, they can leverage the power of the network and create a disruptive force for the competition.To truly understand this concept, look what happened to Uber, or Lyft, or AirBnB or other similar marketplaces. Seemingly disparate and disorganized players — get acclimatized (read: harmonized) under a single brand, unified processes and literally take the carpet out underneath from the incumbent and de novo competitors.Let’s say as a Money Transfer Operator, you need to buy a chair for your office. If a single person walks into a store to buy an office chair, there might not be any discounts for that person. But if 50 companies pool their purchasing power to buy 50 office-chairs, you can bet you bottom dollar that you will get a discount. This is how leveraging works. This effect is called the Economy of Scale. (or Economies of Scale).Here is are the definitions of what Economies of Scale are:Investopedia: Economies of ScaleWikipedia: Economies of ScaleThis is one concept, you have read and understand. For your future may literally depend on it.Here is another great article by Intelligent Economist and this graph that pretty much sums it up:When competing for money transfer businesses collaborate (and we help them do that) then the results are amazing. Suddenly, you have a very large network willing to help out. Networks like BNI and Rotary Club have banked on these ideas for years and have achieved success because of it. Why should the money transfer industry be any different?The whole idea behind the Uberization of money transfer to bring various money transfer operators under one umbrella and empower them with tools, access to networks, resources and more importantly new business that they never had before. Read this article I wrote a long time ago: The Uberization of Money Transfer.You need to get out of your comfort zone for this to happen. If it was that easy, it would have happened already.Nothing ever happens in your comfort zone.If you are willing to open up to ideas that can help you elevate your business from where it is, to a playing field you have perhaps only dreamed of.What do we bring to the table? Lots of things. Technology stack. Information Technology, Access to more banking. Better AML/KYC resources and partnerships, enhanced payment networks and payment processors. Access to different markets. Faster payment rails. Additional transaction types. etc.