News

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...

Commentary
Will Zong Make eBay the Future of Retail Commerce?
July 07, 2011

eBay’s announcement yesterday of its acquisition of Zong is just another interesting example of this e-commerce giant’s grand ambition to change the face of retail as merchants and consumers know it and experience it today. Here’s what I mean. Retail Nirvana as envisioned by eBay...

Commentary
Dangers of Assuming Invincibility – Could Your Firm Go the Way of the Typewriter Makers?
June 29, 2011

There was a lot of great stuff that came out of the Payments Innovation Institute at Harvard last week but two anecdotes that have absolutely nothing to do with payments specifically, I think, provide some of the more thought provoking insights around the pitfalls and...

Commentary
Why Facebook is Ripe for Commerce
June 22, 2011

I have always been up for a challenge. I read just last week a quote from someone from Forrester who basically said that anyone who believes Facebook is the commerce frontier is basically smoking something. (Well, what he said was that they had about as...

Commentary
“Googling” mPayments Ignition? Why Google’s Wallet May Be the Top Search Result
May 29, 2011

– Ask the Industry: Will Google Wallet ignite mobile payments? Share your thoughts here.   Google’s announcement today of its NFC-mobile payments scheme is, with a few exceptions, a real textbook case study in what you need to do if you want to ignite a...

News
S-Commerce- A Fourth Retail Channel: An Overview of Social Commerce and What’s Fueling its Growth
May 25, 2011

Introduction   This section of the Lydian Journal examines the world of social commerce, or as some have described it, the fourth retail channel. Four distinct elements define this commerce opportunity for merchants: (i) the explosive growth of social networks, in particular, Facebook, (ii) the...

Financial Inclusion
Improving the Economics of Small-Balance Accounts
April 21, 2011

Global financial inclusion surveys show that there are billions of low-income individuals who want a safe place to save, and evidence suggests that they are willing to pay for it. Many low-income individuals are currently able to store small values with licensed financial service providers....

Cool
Educating the Next Generation of Security Professionals
April 21, 2011

Editor’s Note   In the world today, few topics are more talked about and less understood than “cyber security.” Almost daily, it seems, we hear of another threat to the computer systems that support and control the world’s critical infrastructure. Attacks on government and industry...

Cool
The FACTA the Matter: Recent Cases Involving Payment Card Receipts Illustrate Flaws in “Bounty” Enforcement...
April 21, 2011

Introduction   Private ordering, rather than government intervention, has been the primary force behind the development of data security measures in the payment card industry. [1] Government intervention often occurs in response to security breakdowns, which draw attention to weaknesses in the private ordering regime....