For those of us following the evolution of mobile payments in the US, it was quite a week indeed. What with PayPal’s peek behind the curtain at enabling its users to pay at physical POS merchants and MasterCard’s Investor Day briefing and demonstrations of its various...
Payments Disruption in Action
Every so often, we can be witnesses to disruptive innovation in action. It’s exciting when it happens - for those who see it. Alas, most don’t see it - although they will eventually. Which pair of glasses are you peering through? For those who can see it, there’s...
Yep, It’s Hip to Be Square!
Some 17 months ago, I wrote a post here titled "It's Hip to Be Square" following the launch of Jack Dorsey's then new company. At the time I wrote:Square seems to be aiming at democratizing merchant card acceptance for physical face-to-face card transactions – a...
The PayPal Juggernaut
A couple of weeks ago, eBay held an Analyst Day where eBay senior management shared their thinking about the future of the changing commerce landscape - and how they're thinking about taking the "e" out of eCommerce. (Click here for the PDF of the presentation.)...
Parallels: From Post-PC to Post-Card…
I'm always excited about Apple announcements - and today's announcement of the iPad 2 was just the latest example. What was the keyword of the day today? It was Post-PC. The world of the iPad (and the iPhone and the iPod) is the world of Post-PC. As payments geeks,...
ROAP – Chipotle Is Earning My Loyalty Today!
Over the last month or two, I've become strangely addicted to the Chipotle iPhone app. That's the app that lets me order my lunchtime Chipotle salad in something like ten seconds flat. Why am I so addicted? Because of the beautiful integration of this particular...
Bergeron’s Rules for Mobile Payments
In a VeriFone press release today titled "VeriFone Says Merchant Buy-In Key to Success of Mobile Commerce", VeriFone CEO Doug Bergeron outlined six "rules" that he said "industry participants need to adhere to in order to ensure success of mobile commerce." Bergeron's...
The Case for EMV Chip Cards in the US?
In one of my prior lives, I made the phone call that triggered what eventually became the industry standard for chip card deployment now known as EMV (Europay-MasterCard-Visa). That call was made almost 20 years ago. At the time, I was at Visa where we were spending a...
A Bubble in Mobile Payments?
I’m sure you’ve seen it - there’s been so much “buzz” in the press over the last few weeks about mobile payments. Yet, in our partners' meeting at Glenbrook earlier this week, I told my colleagues that if I knew of a way to short "mobile payments", I'd be all over it....
Innovations in Card Acceptance
What Drives Innovation? More often than not, the successful innovations that surprise us come from disrupters who focus in a laser-like way on unserved market opportunities. In doing so, they are able to successfully fly below the radar of the incumbents (to use...