Reading up on payment and financial issues is – big surprise – not always enlightening, exciting and other words beginning with ‘e-’. Nope, it can be boring at times.

But not today. Following an internal discussion we stumbled across a few articles, highlighting a few facts about Women and Money.

For instance, in Japan women are the family’s treasurer. She organizes, distributes and manages the family funds, decides what gets bought and naturally pays the bills. According to a recent informal oXYGen Financial survey of Generation X clients (born 1965 to 1979), so do 65% percent of women in a ‘western world’ household. Even more so, when the men is the primary wage earner.

In a recent speech from May 2010, Governor Elizabeth Duke adresses the topic ‘Women and Money’ and – apart from confirming the previous paragraph – cleans up a few typical misconceptions that class women as ‘impulsive buyers’ and ‘bad at maths’ and ‘emotional about money’. That is a shockingly outdated public view and far from the actual truth. Very readable speech, found here in its entirety. Especially since we are, once again, reminded that women have lower average wages and lower lifetime earnings. That needs to be changed yesterday.

What does that mean for Jumio? Firstly, since women are more often than not the ones paying the bills, they will also be, as a whole, more savvy with a variety of payment methods and are usually more open to new solutions. In Jumio’s development phase that knowledge plays a very important role. And secondly? Women live longer.

Here I am, sitting in the French part of the Silicon Valley (Le Vallee, as we call it), and it’s time to moan.

Why is it that something we have to do daily, wherever we go and whoever we deal with can be clustered with unnecessary obstacles and frustrating limitations? All through the day, money changes hands. Clumsy cash transactions, cumbersome bank transfers. I know, it’s all necessary, it’s all good, but I feel there has to be a way to simplify it all.

Stating the obvious now: Jumio is working on such a solution. We’ll let you know the details in due time. But for now, let’s look at facts and misconceptions about how we pay or can’t pay in our daily lives.

As a private person I can’t accept credit cards. This might not be true in some countries, but can be quite an issue in others. No universal solution there yet.

Money transfer requires a bank. Again: True in some cases, false in others. Small payments are usually cash transactions that don’t require the electronic or personal assistance of a bank. But then again, that means that you always have to carry around a bit of cash for that quick hot dog or a can of Coke on the street corner.

Credit card fraud is a major concern. And these days, credit card fraud without the actual credit card is the way to go if you’re a hip card fraudster. Phishing is a phenomenon not just attributed to following a popular band, but a real concern for online credit card users. Credit card not present at transaction fraud is on the rise. That’s a fact.

We are not here to cause paranoia. We are here to create awareness for payment issues. And we’re here to make it better. We’ll tell you more next time and over the coming months.