Karen Webster

The Google Wallet News That Wasn’t
June 10, 2013

Let’s face it, the only news that broke last week when Business Week published its story about Google Wallet was that it had been downloaded around 10 million times since its launch two years ago. Frankly, that was about 9,950,000 more times than I actually...

Mike Passilla On CMS: An Appropriate Evolution
May 28, 2013

I had a chance to catch up with Mike Passilla yesterday, the newly announced CEO of Merchant Services at Chase and former CEO of Elavon. Mike did an interview a couple of years back with a publication in Atlanta that did an executive profile on...

B2B Payments
B2B Breakthrough: Discover, Ariba Launch AribaPay
May 08, 2013

Really and truly solving the B2B payments’ problem over the years has been a little bit like proving Fermat’s last theorem – lots and lots have tried and a few have even gotten pretty close. But no one has been able to enter the market...

Millennials vs. Boomers: Who Will Boost Consumer Spending?
April 28, 2013

I walked to my little local market this morning in Boston and saw the latest issue of Barron’s on the newsstand. The cover story is all about U.S. Millennials: those 18- to 37-year-olds who, according to this article, are the future of the U.S. economy...

Apple’s mPayments Strategy: Wait And See
April 24, 2013

Three guesses – and the first two don’t count – on who said this about what topic and when. “I think it’s in its infancy, I think it’s just getting started. Just out of the starting block.” That would be Tim Cook, Apple CEO, on mobile payments,...

How JCP’s Strategy Made A Penney Not Saved
April 14, 2013

Just about everyone by now knows the story of JC Penney, or JCP as the brand is now known. In forty characters, it is how a 110-year-old brand hires Apple exec to turn it from old and dowdy into hip and cool and crashes and...

The Incredible Shrinking Google Wallet
March 25, 2013

Seven years into the retail payments game, search giant Google has struggled to find its footing in the retail payments game.  The news that broke about ten days ago, as its Commerce reorg sent a huge signal about its plans to address this – at...

The Innovation Project 2013: Igniting Payments Innovation
March 24, 2013

Visa, Chase Deal Personifies Payments Platform Trend Social Media Sentiments: Who Really Drives (Or Deters) Mobile Payments? The Innovation Project™ 2013 was an amazing experience from beginning to end. We set out to facilitate a series of C-level-to-C-level conversations about payments and commerce that went...

Commentary
Visa, Chase Deal Personifies Payments Platform Trend
March 04, 2013

Payments has always been about platforms, of course, given the sector's two/multi-sided structure. But the big news that broke across the industry over these last two weeks is, I think the tip of the iceberg. If 2012 was the year of the mobile wallet, 2013...