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Posts By Karen Webster
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17.4KCFPBWhy Regulators’ War On Fees Will Kill Consumers
Free. What can be better than free? “Free” is so alluring that songwriters have created a boatload of songs about the concept....
- Mobile Commerce
Chatbots And The Future Of Facebook Messenger
Until about a couple of weeks ago, bots were mostly thought of as the last four letters of a word that began...
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21.2KPayment MethodsThe ‘Uber Of Nothing’ Is Coming
Payment’s Next Big Thing: The “Uber Of Nothing” ”I’m about to sneeze. May I have a Kleenex, please?” “I have a headache....
- Merchant Innovation
Why Contextual Commerce Is The Next Big Thing
In January of this year, I wrote a piece in which I said there were six things that would shape the direction...
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26.4KFaster PaymentsThe Fastest Path To Faster Payments In The US
The path to faster payments in the U.S. doesn’t have to be paved with a 500+ person task force analyzing what the...
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63.6KNFCUK’s Lessons For US Mobile Payments Adoption
Consumers and retailers in the U.S. apparently just aren’t getting it. The latest stats coming out of the U.K. show that one...
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33.9KPayments InnovationSleepless In Payments
The world is increasingly sleep deprived. Nearly 70 percent of adults in the U.S., 75 percent in the U.K. and nearly a third...
- Payment Methods
How Payments Will Save Retail
I, Shopper, take thee, Online Retailer, to be my faithful partner in commerce. To have and to hold from this day forward...
- Mobile Commerce
If Mobile Is ‘Everything,’ Why Haven’t We Seen More Progress?
“Mobile is everything.” That’s the theme of this year’s Mobile World Congress. The conference organizers make a great point. Mobile is everything...
- Marketplace Lending Platform
Is The Tide Going Out On Marketplace Lending?
Warren Buffett is a lot more than just a mega-billionaire and one of the world’s most revered investors. He’s a philanthropist. He’s...
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11.4KeCommerceCensus Calls For Retraction – Webster Calls For Independent Audit
“I’m from the government and I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong.” That was sort of the email that I got...
- Innovation
Innovation’s Trivial Pursuits
What passes today as innovation is really pretty trivial. That’s the view of Robert Gordon, noted macroeconomist and Stanley G. Harris...
- Payment Methods
Could Apple Be The Next Amex, Or Could Amex Be The Next Apple?
We all watched yesterday as two of the NFL’s crown jewels battled it out for a chance at Super Bowl 50. Manning...
- eCommerce
Massive Online Retail Data Error Uncovered
It’s common knowledge that Kodak’s demise came at the hands of digital. But few know the whole story of why that happened....
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23.7KAmazonIs Alexa The Savior or Slayer Of Merchants?
“Defender of man.” That’s the meaning of a girl’s name that, until recently, wasn’t all that popular or even very familiar. But...
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77.4KMobile CommerceThe Six Things That Will Define Payments In 2016
There are lots of things that will influence the actions of the players within the vast and dynamic ecosystem in 2016. But...
- Payment Methods
Five From ’15: The 2016 Payments Pacesetters
There are four more days until we say “bye-bye” to 2015 and “hello” to a whole new year. As part of that...
- 19.6KKaren Webster
The Race For Faster Payments Rails
Usain Bolt is the fastest human on earth, but cheetahs are three times faster. Does that make cheetahs better than a 6-time...
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9.1KKaren WebsterThe Rest Of The Payments 2015 By The Letter: S Through Z
A was for Apple Pay, B was for bitcoin and C was for cross-border. OK, maybe you saw those ones coming, but...
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9.9KKaren WebsterPayments 2015 By The Letter: L Through R
Narrowing an entire year of payments activity into a 26-item list may sound like quite the feat. And with one for every...
- Payment Methods
The A, B, Cs Of Payments 2015
Well, here we are – just a few short weeks before 2015 is one for the history books. What a year it’s...
- Karen Webster
Payments Disruption By Any Other Name
HBS Professor Clay Christensen published an article last week that said Uber isn’t a disruptive innovation - even though 100 out of...
- Karen Webster
Issuers To Apple Pay: Just Say No!
Odysseus was a pretty clever fellow. For those who might need a crash course in ancient Greek history, Odysseus was the mythical king...
- Karen Webster
The Great Facebook SMB Conversion Challenge
Facebook went all in on SMBs last week during its earnings call – citing a number of things that they are doing...
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14.7KKaren WebsterThrough The Mobile Payments Looking Glass
“Curiouser and Curiouser” might have first been spoken by Alice in Wonderland after she tumbled down the rabbit hole, but it seems...
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15.4KKaren WebsterMobile Payments’ Great Big Leap
There’s a perfect storm brewing in payments – one that’s intensifying because of the shift to EMV. And one that could accelerate...
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10.7KHmmmThe Dangers Of Groupthink
Was med-tech startup, Theranos, following in the footsteps of Uber and simply embarking on “permissionless” innovation? Or is its current firestorm the...
- Hmmm
Does The CFPB Really Help Consumers?
The law of unintended consequences is alive and well in Washington, D.C. and in particular, inside the agency formed to advocate for...
- Karen Webster
The Blockchain: ‘Just Like the Internet,’ Except That It’s Not
The Blockchain: “It’s just like the Internet.” And so starts every conversation by the devoted to explain why bitcoin and the blockchain...
- International
The Incredible Mobile Payments Myth
MPD CEO Karen Webster says that everything that you’ve heard over the last several years about how successful mobile payments are at...
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6.3KControversialWill Ad Blockers Drive Mobile Commerce Innovation?
- Karen Webster
Will Apple Own The Payments Customer?
It’s September 14, 2022, eight years after the first Apple Pay network and issuer deals were signed. Does Apple own the payments’...
- Karen Webster
“First, Let’s Kill All The (Payments) Innovators!”
Dick The Butcher, in Shakespeare’s "Henry VI," famously proposed “first let’s kill the lawyers” as the most appropriate way to jumpstart the...
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20.2KKaren WebsterThe Great American (Express) Spin-off?
2015 has been a tough year for American Express. Its stock price and market cap have been pummeled, Costco waved goodbye (taking...
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11.6KKaren WebsterTo See The Future Of Retail, Look At Mobile Banking
Want to see the future of retail? Take a look at retail banking today. Sounds nuts, doesn’t it? But MPD CEO Karen...
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4.8KMobile CommerceExclusive: MCX CEO On CurrentC’s Future
On Aug. 15, 2012, a group of retailers representing $1 Trillion in purchasing power announced that it was banding together to create...
- Karen Webster
How To Reinvent Retail In Three Words
Coming out of the Retail Reinvention Summit last week, one thing became very clear: there are as many ways to approach the...
- Karen Webster
Payments At The Beach!
It’s the first week of August time and that can only mean one thing: It’s time to head to the beach. For...
- Karen Webster
The Emperor’s New Currency
One hundred and seventy eight years ago, Hans Christian Andersen wrote a political satire disguised as a fairy tale. That tale told...
- 7.8KControversial
Will CurrentC Succeed? Here’s How We’ll Know
Bloomberg ran a story late Friday announcing the imminent launch of CurrentC, the merchant-owned and operated mobile payments scheme. Oh, you missed...
- Hmmm
The A, B, Cs Of PayPal’s Next Act
Today is “day one” of PayPal as an independent player, broken apart from the eBay that ignited some 13 years ago. And...
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8.4KKaren WebsterWhat’s More Valuable – A Buy Button Or a Digital Wallet?
Mobile payments is becoming a pretty messy space. One might argue that it’s been a hot mess ever since the massive proliferation...
- Karen Webster
Want To Meet A Few Of The “Payments Revolutionaries” Who’ve Changed Payments?
Last Saturday, America celebrated the 239th anniversary of the outcome that these revolutionaries fought for: independence from the King, But the payments...
- Karen Webster
The Dangers of Listening To Consumers
In 1999, 92 percent of consumers said that they didn’t trust that their data was secure when transacting online. Sixteen years later,...
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5.5KKaren WebsterAre Card Networks Tomorrow’s Ad Platforms?
Card-linked offers have been singularly unimpressive as a category. They’ve been around for years and raised a ton of capital, but have...
- Karen Webster
What Mobile Wallets And Smartphone Cameras Now Have In Common
Apple and Google Android have just recast mobile wallets as smartphone utilities – putting them in the same category as cameras, maps,...
- Karen Webster
The Most Frequently Asked Question About Mobile Payments
“Are we there yet,” though, is shorthand for “When will all of the time and money and investments we’ve made in mobile...
- Karen Webster
Why Android Pay Isn’t Really About Payments At All
To no one’s great surprise, we added another “Pay” player to payments last week. Android Pay threw its hat into the mobile...
- Controversial
The CFPB, PrePaid Cards And Protecting Consumers To Death
So here’s a question. When is a prepaid card actually a credit card? Here’s an answer: When the CFPB says so. The...
- Karen Webster
The “Why” Behind Google Buy
Remember the piece I wrote last week about whether payments can save the Internet ad giants? Well, it appears that Google not...
