In a post titled “Great since day one“, Marco Arment blogs about what makes the iPhone different – in essence he writes that Apple makes products that are great today. Android isn’t.
Reading his post brought to mind the fragmented nature of the card payments ecosystem that we live in – and how it’s so difficult to innovate in a way that provides an easy, simple and complete consumer experience.
Isn’t that the weak underbelly of today’s card payments acceptance environment? The fragmented nature of it – merchants having to deal with acquirers, struggling with PCI-DSS compliance, etc. Issuers who can’t influence the acceptance environment – yet are dependent upon it.
Problems like these create new opportunities – for those bold enough to pursue them. Yet the incumbents continue with their “business as usual” strategies.
Where are the smart new entrants – eager to disrupt? One thing’s almost certain – they’re out there working hard and they’ll soon surprise us – then, we’ll say: “Of course!”
Scott is a founder of Glenbrook with more than 30 years of experience in information technology. He is a co-author of the book “Payments Systems in the U.S.” and a co-inventor of US Patent 6,332,126 and US Patent 7,840,459. At Glenbrook, Scott focused his work on payments innovation, mobile payments, and social media / Web 2.0 in banking and financial services.
Previously, Scott was group executive vice president at First Data Merchant Services and at Visa International, where he led the development of Visa’s global payment systems strategies. Scott began his career as a systems engineer with IBM, where he held a series of technical management and product planning positions over seventeen years. Scott formally retired from Glenbrook in October 2016, but remains important to the firm as both a friend and advisor.