The most important holiday of the year is nearly upon us. No, not Christmas. Festivus. For those who were not Seinfeld viewers in the ’90s, Festivus is the fake holiday that George Costanza’s family celebrated while other people were prattling on about peace on Earth...
Several years ago, I was listening to current JW Player President, Chris Mahl, give a talk on mobile payments and loyalty. He started the speech by recounting something they lived by during his days at Oracle: “shift happens.” It does. In fact, if you follow...
More is always better, right? At least that’s been the conventional wisdom with respect to how many companies pursue their innovation agenda. After all, it’s hard to know what will stick, so why not let a thousand flowers bloom? Well, because sometimes it takes too...
As an end of year wrap-up, I thought I’d devote a few words to what the past year held for financial technology trends; a retrospective. Without further ado, some thoughts on how 2014 panned out. Alternative lending: Hit Lending Club is going public. Ondeck has...
After two months of being inundated with payment innovation announcements, a bit of chaos, and seemingly unending debates about the “better” technology and new approaches, let’s take a brief time out. While multiple players in the ecosystem, namely the networks, have made great strides to...
Like many young parents across America, I spend a lot of time at Walgreens. If fact, as I am not such a “younger” parent anymore, I find myself spending more time then I would like there. I have found Walgreens to be a reasonably good...
The Fed issued its update recently on the state of the mobile US landscape two years after its Mobile Payments Industry Workgroup (MPIW) convened to provide guidance on how to move the mobile industry forward. I have read the report several times and so wanted...
Actions in the aftermath of the recent merchant data breaches have demonstrated the potential dangers that extend beyond simply not improving payments-data security. Knee-jerk reacting is another, and that appears to be what Target’s doing in saying it will push hard now for EMV card...
Shaw’s Supermarket here in Boston made a little bit of news in the run-up to the 4th of July holiday. It’s dumping its loyalty card program. Well to be technical, Albertson’s - the Idaho-based North American grocery chain that owns them – decided that all...
