[LINK] Financial Collapse from Web Reintermediation?

[Tom Worthington]

Recently I noticed a TV ad for PayOnce <http://payonce.com.au/>, 
which offers to consolidate all your bills into one. Their home page 
takes a minute to download and the address is a PO Box in Devonport 
Tasmania, which does not fill me with confidence, but they say they 
have "heaps of experience in banking".

There is more detail in the web site of the company behind the 
venture <http://www.acreis.com/offering.html>. From this it appears 
that the idea is to provide another level of debt financing, for 
people who can't pay off their credit cards: "Customers can pay the 
full amount, the minimum amount due, or even a standing amount each 
month equal to their budget. ... We offer up to 45 days interest-free 
and a competitive interest rate thereafter.".

There also seem to have been a lot of ads for telecommunications 
companies which have no telecommunications infrastructure. Rather 
than disintermediation, the web is providing for new layers of 
service providers, each as thin as a playing card. This gives me an 
uncomfortable feeling that with a small increase in interest rates 
this house of cards will collapse and we will have a combined 
financial crisis and dot.com crash.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Director, ACS Communications Tech Board   http://www.acs.org.au/ctb/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml