Karma as Capital: The Future of Payments - Creative Futurism

In this episode, John and Kevin speak with payments expert Chuck Davidson, head of customer engagement at Card Free, about the future of digital consumer relationships and 'internet of character'. Chuck Davidson is Mobile payment innovator; designed, developed and launched Starbucks Mobile Payment - the largest mobile payment system in the US from idea to beta to 10,000+ store launch. Leader with 19 + years of successful product innovation experience in Payments, Loyalty and Consumer Products.

John:                Welcome everybody to this episode of Creative Futurism. My name’s John Best.

Kevin:             And this is Kevin J. Anderson.

John:                And today we have-and by the way, you’ve had all these amazing guests, so it’s my turn to bring someone amazing. And I’m excited for you to meet-

Kevin:             -It’s about time you did some work.

John:               I know. It’s about time I did something for this podcast. You can hear him laughing in the background there. I’d like to welcome-

Kevin:             -You brought the joker onto our podcast.

John:                I did. Speaking of that I’ve got one of your Superman books here. But just a friend of mine for a long time. He was the dude who was primarily one of the main players in the Starbucks app that you said you use frequently, right?

Kevin:             Oh, all the time.

John:                And my wife won’t even let me buy anything from Starbucks. If I try to buy it with cash or anything else-

Kevin:             -Oh no, you don’t get the points.

John:                Well, you don’t get the little stars in the cup, right? So that’s a big deal. But with us is Chuck Davidson. He’s the head of customer engagement right now for Card Free, but in a past life he worked for Starbucks. He’s also one of the most fascinating guys I’ve ever met in the sense of understanding how this goes. And we’re going to talk about the future of payments today. So we’re a little bit in my wheelhouse. A little less about the physics and the last time when everyone laughed at me when I wanted to shoot radioactive waste to the moon.

Kevin:             That’s a dumb idea, dumb idea.

John:                I realize that is a bad idea. But welcome Chuck, how are you?

Chuck:           Dude, that would look so cool by the way. Okay, I’m doing great and I’m really glad to be a part of this and really excited to chat with you guys and our huge audience.

Kevin:             Well, and the whole point of Creative Futurism is to be talking about creativity and business and technology and how it’s all changing because I think all of us at our age-and of course we’re very young and virile and muscular and stuff. But at our age it’s almost like hyperventilating every day. Because just everyday stuff is changing at warp speed. And I find that I can’t even update the apps on my phone fast enough because they keep changing. And you being involved with the Starbucks app, which if I remember reading your stuff right the most popular business-

John:                -Number one mobile payment app in the world still.

Kevin:             Yeah, that-I resisted it first being real grouchy. I just want to use my real gold card. But it’s so easy. And once they started using it I get annoyed when I go to someplace where they don’t have the reader. And I guess what we want to talk about is this podcast is about how we deal with the future and how much it’s changing. And particularly some of the unintended consequences of it. So that’s just my kind of little soapbox, I’ll turn it back to John.

John:                Sure. So where I want to start with this is what was the promise of payments like?