Remember the good old days? You carried a Visa card and you could use it anywhere Visa was accepted. Visa logo on the front of the card; Visa acceptance mark on the merchant’s window. To the cardholder, it was a Visa transaction; to the merchant it was a Visa...
Recorded about a month ago by VC firm Matrix Partners, Glenbrook's Scott Loftesness and Dana Stalder of Matrix Partners discuss the evolution of mobile payments, the business model failure of Softcard, and other topics including: The 8+ year journey to ApplePay...
I am writing this post sitting on the front steps of our house in San Francisco. I have locked myself out three times recently, more than I have in the past three decades. Is it dementia? No, I blame mobile payments. Last summer I bought a case for my iPhone that...
These are some personal observations on Apple Pay, after an exciting week of reading announcements from Apple and reactions from bloggers. (If you want a Glenbrook business view on the announcement, read Wednesday's post by my partner George Peabody.) For several...
As anticipated, and widely leaked, PayPal today announced PayPal Here, its mobile payments acceptance solution, at a private event in San Francisco. At a high-level it matches – and in some cases, exceeds – the features offered by Square and the other mobile POS...
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...
That's actually two big hands clapping for Starbucks - but I'm using the one hand clapping metaphor to help make a point! Congratulations to Starbucks for taking the lead in mobile payments in the U.S. with its announcement this morning that now all Starbucks...
I'm here in Seattle today at NACHA's Payments 2010 conference along with Russ and Erin. I'm mulling over a couple things I heard in sessions today, trying to draw the line between them. Early this morning, I sat in on a briefing by eCom Advisors about a study they...
Another year has flown by and here I am at the 2010 ETA Annual Meeting. I love to walk through the exhibit hall and see “what’s hot,” what’s changed, and what never changes at this ISO conference. So here goes… Before I arrived I tried to predict what the hot...
Apple created a lot of buzz in the industry last week when it previewed the new capabilities of iPhone OS 3.0. Leading the list of new features, surprisingly, was a payments-related enhancement called "In App Purchase". I missed the briefing, but saw this new...
