Is Visa Becoming Serious about Mobile?

Posted by Patrick Gauthier on 24 February 2010 | 2 Comments

Tags: Bill Gajda, Visa, Visa Mobile, Mobile payments, NFC, Mobile Money Transfer, mobile banking, m-commerce, mobile, iphone, apple, droid, google, mastercard, american express, networks, credit card, payments, issuer, processor, platform, nfc, card not present, obopay, monitise, gsma, nokia, paypal

Visa's appointment of industry veteran Bill Gajda is an important signal, but structural challenges to innovation will have to be addressed.

Ever since its Initial Public Offering prospectus Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) has made no mystery of the importance it thought mobile payments would have in its future. Yet, judging from its press releases over the last 18 months, the company was struggling to define and implement a vision of why and how. Interestingly, the only significant allocation of resource to mobile payments came from Visa Europe, which announced earlier this month its intention to invest 200 million Euros.

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NFC: Past, Present and Future

Posted by Patrick Gauthier on 16 February 2010 | 0 Comments

Tags: NFC, Near Field Communications, Mobile Payments, PayPass, PayWave, Mobile World Congress, GSMA, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Advertisement

The announcement by the GSMA and its partners of another NFC demonstration pilot highlights how Near Field Communication is caught in the "trough of disillusionment." Commerce innovators shouldn't despair, the future is bright.

What a difference a couple of years make! During CES in 2008, visitors were treated to a variety of demonstrations at the "NFC Zone" where they could experience the power of simplicity NFC style. Yet, at last's month edition of the consumer technology pilgrimage, NFC seemed to stand for "Not Found at this Conference." What happened? Is it just the financial crisis, something more profound or the natural growing pains associated with a disruptive technology?

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Barbarians at the Gate: The Coming Disruption of Retail Banking

Posted by Patrick Gauthier on 12 January 2010 | 1 Comments

Tags: mobile banking, disruptive innovation, retail banking, prepaid card, PayPal, Obopay, Aliaswire, prepaid, credit card, verisign, retail deposits, mobile, m-commerce, atm, Plastyc

How Prepaid Cards Enhanced with Mobile Delivery Create a New Competitive Paradigm

It can’t be fun being a banking executive these days. Your herd is being thinned, your bonus is under scrutiny, new laws are limiting your business and driving up the complexity of regulatory compliance, and you might take the fall for the Great Recession . Still, real challenges may lie beyond these "road bumps", in the form of a gathering threat to the foundation of banking: retail deposits. This is no trivial matter. Given the demonstrated limits of securitization, the need to reduce leverage, and the strings attached to government funds, retail deposit are a critical source of funding for the future of any diversified financial services provider.

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Why Paypal May Do to Payments What Apple Did to the Mobile Ecosystem

Posted by Patrick Gauthier on 7 January 2010 | 4 Comments

Tags: paypal, apple, ecommerce, payments, boku, zong, mpayy, visa, mastercard, paypalX, social, mobile, m-commerce, point-of-sale, pos, american express, amex, b2b, p2p, purchasing cards, Fundrazr, alibaba, Adaptive Payments

PayPal Will Open Up the Walled Garden of Payments

The 4th quarter of 2009 is definitely starting to feel like the dawn of a new age for e-commerce, with many attempts to integrate commerce with social computing and mobile use cases. Many companies are vying for a spot as the primary gateway to payments, thus fueling a new round of innovation.

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Mobilizing Citibank: A Tale of Trials and Tribulations

Posted by Patrick Gauthier on 14 December 2009 | 3 Comments

Tags: citi, citibank, mobile money, customer service, obopay, firethron, mobile, steve kietz, USAA, financial supermarket

Earlier this week, Citibank provided some perspective on their mobile strategy and their renewed focus on a better delivery of "traditional" customer service.

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Square Aims at Mobilizing Payments

Posted by Patrick Gauthier on 3 December 2009 | 3 Comments

Tags: square, iphone, apple, disruptive technology, mobile, smartphone, payments, credit card, card networks, twitter, jack dorsey

Once again the silicon valley is abuzz with talk about the new project from one of its heroes, but will Square, meet expectations?

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