Just last month I published a report, Quasi-Merchant, Meet the Quasi-Terminal: Merchant Acquiring Growth via the Mobile Device, in which I wrote that providing payment acceptance solutions to self-employed individuals would yield almost US$1 billion in net revenue by 2016. I also wrote the following: “Bank acquirers, in particular, seem well positioned to deliver solutions to this market. Their extensive distribution capabilities across consumer and small-business markets, pre-existing relationships with all different types of consumers and small businesses, extensive risk management capabilities, core competencies in the merchant acquiring space, and branding infrastructure should make them ideal candidates to penetrate this … Continue Reading →

The digital wallet is coming. Just to name a few, Google, Isis, Visa, PayPal, Square, Serve, Apple, SparkBase, TabbedOut, Level Up, and ProPay have all launched or announced intentions to launch retail digital-payment solutions. While they all have their own unique approaches to the market, they also have major commonalities. First and foremost, they all seek to provide value-added services in addition to payments. Each intends to transform not only the way consumers pay, but also the way consumers shop. Transforming the way consumers shop is a lot bigger than transforming the way they pay. Doing so will require a … Continue Reading →

Amex is launching a new mobile payment solution that enables consumers to consolidate all of their cards onto one and choose via mobile which funding method they use at the point of sale. We view the launch as the first credible move by a major card network and issuer to build an early-stage mobile-payment wallet, independent of the telcos, in the United States. We call the solution elegant and intermediary. Intermediary because it involves getting consumers in the habit of using their mobile phones to drive their payments without being a true mobile payment solution. Elegant because it means that Amex can … Continue Reading →

According to the World Payments Report 2010, December 2010: Payments and other transaction banking services proved resilient during the economic crisis, but the rapidly changing external environment will require banks to decide to what extent payments are core to their business strategies.  . . . [Some of] the key findings of this report include the following: The payments business has withstood the financial crisis well. Only time will tell the ultimate impact, but initial data suggest payments volumes continued to expand in 2009. The global use of non-cash payment instruments continued to grow in 2008, despite the financial crisis. The … Continue Reading →

On Thursday, December 9, Aite Group’s Wholesale Banking Team welcomed 120 banking executives to a day of idea and information sharing. The doors opened at noon for lunch, and Aite Group’s Christine Barry welcomed the group.  BNY Mellon’s Susan Skerritt shared thoughts and advice about innovation in the new rules environment. She spoke about a proactive institutional approach to prepare for regulatory eventualities while keeping client focus and collaboration uppermost in the organization’s mindset, and left us with sound advice for 2011: Keep an open and innovative mind, stay close to clients, and empower staff. Christine Barry then presented her … Continue Reading →

The term “killer app” gets thrown around a lot, so here’s what I’m thinking it means when I use it: An app that drives a step-function increase in the adoption of a technology. Spreadsheets are the best example of a killer app that I know of. It might be hard for many Gen Yers to imagine what the world was like before the Internet, let alone before PCs. But when PCs first arrived on the scene, their widespread adoption was not a slam dunk. After all, we had word processors for word processing (duh!) and mainframe and mini computers for … Continue Reading →