New Service Idea

Re: [spiers] New Service Idea

I love the idea. I live in Las Vegas and I think it would work well here. From
my research of 2005, 12% of our 36 million visitors were from another country.
I am sure there is quite a bit of foreign currency. Further we have more and
more high end shops opening up every day.

I know that certain casinos will provide exchange services for their high end
customers. I do not know on what terms but I do know how to find out. I also
am unaware if the casinos will do this for businesses renting space on their
property.

From what I learned from the class and the book, it seems to me that my first
step would be to go into these high end shops and find out if they take foreign
currency and if not, why?

There are a lot of logistics to work out but this is the exactly the type of
business that I have a passion for so it is a challenge that I look forward to.

Tom

P.S. I welcome suggestions that any of you may have to help me steal this idea!



John Spiers wrote: Folks,

It is not uncommon for airport vendors (outside of USA anyway) to accept
payment in a foreign
currency and give the change in a local currency.

What happens is the vendor takes say JPY1000 (which is about US$10) and
converts it to about HK
$70, charges the HK$34 for the mocha grande and gives the patron (70 - 34 = 36)
HK$36 in
change.

Now, what if someone were to develop a program that that converted foreign
currency at a
handsome profit (that part is simple) for retailers to use so they could accept
foreign currency
from retailer customers in USA.

Some traveller has a 500 euro note left over from a trip, is buying dinner at a
fancy restaurant, the
restaurant accepts the EU500 , converts it to US$650, takes out the US$400 tab,
and gives change
of US250.

Retailers in USA who sign up for this service agree to use your exchange rate
and sell the foreign
currency to you. You in turn sell it to the banks, at a nice profit.

Of course, you'd have to build in a premium for counterfeit bills, and you'd
have to have some sort
of loss limits, but by introduciing this at the super premium level, the
quantities would be small
and generally the "customer" would be known to the retailer.

The vendor gets an enhanced image of sophistication, may make news and
certainly any time one
can accept more forms of payment, ones business grows. The fact that you are
makiing say 15%
overnight on your money, with ever growing velocity is something no one will
notice or care about
at this level.

Later this biz could be sold to the people who turn pocket change into dollars
at the grocery
stores (I heard copper in pennies is now worth 1.25 cents.)

The job would be to vacuum up all those residual stashes of foreign currency
people have in their
dressers, and make money of course.

Who will take this?

John




Compete on Design!

www.johnspiers.com

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