News

Paralympics Claims Visa Didn’t Meet ATM Agreement
September 01, 2012

The Royal National Institute of Blind People threatened Visa with legal action for failing to provide on-site ATMs for blind users at the Paralympics. Visa signed a $100 million contract with the Paralympics to install eight ATMs for blind users, reports Finextra. Read the full...

Study Finds Smartphone Use Growing Faster Than Internet, PC
September 01, 2012

Analytics firm Flurry has released a study claiming smartphones as the fastest-adopted consumer technology ever, reports Fast Company. The study reports that smartphone use is being adopted twice as fast as the Internet boom and twice as fast as PC use grew in the 1980s....

News
Giftly Wants You To Stop Using Closed-Loop Cards
August 16, 2012

Roughly 60 percent of the $100 billion spent annually on gift cards is loaded onto closed-loop products, according to Dan Kimerling. Kimerling is chief operating officer at Giftly, a two-year-old startup that wants to replace those closed-loop cards by moving gifting to the existing payment...

If Eurozone Collapses, Visa Is Ready
July 02, 2012

The Wall Street Journal reports that Visa is preparing for a potential collapse of the eurozone. Steve Perry, chief commercial official at Visa, told the WSJ that Visa is exploring various possible outcomes, including a total collapse of the eurozone: “From our perspective, we can...

News
Mobile Money Merger: Monitise Buys Clairmail for $173 Million
March 26, 2012

Mobile money firm Monetise acquired Clairmail in a deal valued near $173 million. The combined firm will provide mobile money services to 13 million registered end users, and process more than $10 billion a year in transactions based on current weekly rates. Had the companies...

Green Dot Corporation Announces Federal Reserve Board Approval of its Application to Acquire Bonneville Bancorp
November 23, 2011

Green Dot Corporation (NYSE: GDOT), a leading prepaid financial services company (“Green Dot”), today announced that its application to acquire Bonneville Bancorp (“Bonneville”) and thereby become a bank holding company under the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 has been approved by the Board of...

Commentary
eBay Makes Major Play in Social Commerce Sector with New “Project”
September 10, 2011

eBay has acquired the platform and personnel from the Gifts Project, an Israeli social commerce venture that lets groups of friends come together to purchase a particular present. “The Gifts Project has been powering eBay’s version of the concept called Group Gifts for almost a...

Commentary
Oh, Duh! Payments’ Most Obvious (Yet Overlooked) Best Practice
August 19, 2011

Sometimes it helps to be reminded of the stunningly obvious. You know, like if you want to lose weight, why not just eat less and exercise more? My favorite business example is don’t compete where there’s lots of competition. Blue Ocean Strategy became an enormous...

Commentary
mPayments Trust: Google or Facebook?
August 17, 2011

Familiarity breeds trust, it seems, especially when it comes to mobile payments. By now, everyone and his mother-in-law has seen last week’s survey results touting Visa, MasterCard and AmEx as the top three trusted brands when it comes to mobile payments, with PayPal posting a...