Payments 2017 – One Month In

Business evolution—whether it’s automotive, bioscience, or in the payments industry—proceeds along a predictable path of incremental improvements and optimization. Until it doesn’t and a step function takes effect. Last year was sleepy compared to what we can expect...

Money20/20 Wrap-up

We’ve seen a lot of innovation in payment initiation over the last few years. Apple Pay, Android Pay, Walmart Pay and their like have filled Payments News headline stories. But this year, at Money20/20, consumer-facing innovation downshifted to a lower gear. And...

Coachella Takes Payment Cards – Mostly

I spent the weekend in Indio, California at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival (often referred to as the “Modern Day Woodstock” for you Boomers). Over the few weeks leading up to the event, Square and Apple advertised quite a bit about how every single vendor on...

What’s Next for US Payments

We’ve spent so much time the past several years obsessing about how mobile proximity payments would be deployed in the U.S. and the rest of the developed world. Now we know. This week, Apple Pay celebrates the first anniversary of its launch, and a new generation of...

EMV – Necessary, Insufficient, and our Lasting PR Risk

We are just a month away from the October EMV liability shift and the transition is, to no one’s surprise, mostly incomplete. EMV credit card issuance is expected to be at just 50% by the end of this year. Point of sale hardware upgrades at major retailers may...