The Morning After

PayPal’s Efforts to Capture Payments Share
Three announcements over the last week highlight PayPal’s moves to take a big share of the payments market.

Will the Apple Fall Far From the (Contactless) Tree?
Apple started some tongues a’waggin’ about two weeks ago when reports of its contactless patent filing were released. Is Apple getting ready to enable its users to pay with their iPhones at the point-of-sale?

Facebook Faces Payment Feud Down on the Farm(ville)
There’s a feud taking place on Facebook. And, it’s about money. And, like most feuds over money, it’s about who pays whom and how much. And,  just like the Hatfields and McCoys, the party that fired the first shot may have aimed at the wrong target and for all the wrong reasons.

The Race to Own Mobile Commerce
Apple and Google are off to the races in owning commerce on the mobile phones as recent transactions and announcements clearly show. Here’s a running recap

Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire?
There’s a lot of speculation about the recent move by Target to abandon its Visa co-branded card in favor of its own private label store version. Some say that it is ‘back to the future’ and the start of a trend that will end up bifurcating the card market: general purpose payment and store-branded cards with little in between.

Cards, Coupons, Cell Phones, Oh My.
There was a story earlier this week about the bigger role that “general purpose” payment cards are now playing in the store loyalty card space. The elevator story here is that there are a number of use cases now where store loyalty cards have become electronically attached to a credit card.

NFC Déjà vu all Over Again
There was big news yesterday out of the world of NFC and contactless. A collaborative effort between Inside Contactless, Sagem Orga and TazTag has produced a brand new NFC payments gizmo that is purported to be prescription for what ails NFC payments adoption.

Do Credit Cards ‘Take a Swipe’ at Low Income Households?
The Boston-based Consumer Payments Research Center, which is a part of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, released a study late last week that is sure to generate a lot of debate among credit card holders, issuers, networks and consumer activists.

Will the Mobile Payments JV Trounce MasterCard and Visa?
Judging by the breathy press reports yesterday of the new, sort of, kind of, maybe joint venture between mobile behemoths AT&T and Verizon (with T-Mobile in the mix too) MasterCard and Visa are sitting around conference tables today white-knuckle-gripping their blackberries and iPhones.

Is Behavioral Economics In-Control?
MasterCard’s new In-Control Card (the name speaks for itself but more details on their Product Profile)–illustrates the good side of behavioral economics.