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....
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...
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...
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 (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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
