Tag: data privacy

Whether the Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Act is law or not, data protection compliance has become good business practice, largely because of the reputational and financial risk. Recently, the Information Regulator approached South Africa’s President to issue a commencement date of 1 April 2020 for the remaining provisions of the POPI Act.

Digital and mobile technology is continually evolving and advancing, creating new ways to pay; from mobile wallets to peer-to-peer to digital currency, the modern payments landscape has evolved past simply cards and cash. Consumers, eager to adopt these new ways to pay, are changing their purchasing habits to meet these emerging methods.

As we enter a new decade, CEOs are showing record levels of pessimism in the global economy, with 53% predicting a decline in the rate of economic growth in 2020. This is up from 29% in 2019 and just 5% in 2018 – the highest level of pessimism since we started asking this question in 2012.

Anyone who has worked in marketing for more than a decade will agree that we’ve entered a Golden Age of information. We know more about our consumers, their transactions, preferences, spending habits, income and demographics than ever before, freely surrendered by the consumers themselves as they shop, bank and socialise online.

Today, more and more businesses are confidently outsourcing business functions, or parts thereof to service providers whom they trust to do the job faster, more affordably, and more effectively than they can themselves.

Until now, our industry has spoken about innovative technologies somewhat theoretically, without providing a clear picture of how these powerful new innovations will be used. This has left people without a solid understanding of how they will ultimately manifest in our work and personal lives.

Businesses have never before been so accountable for the use, storing and handling of data. As highlighted by the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal, there is in intense focus currently on data privacy, data security and the responsibility of protecting one’s digital identity.