Karen Webster

Karen Webster
The Great American (Express) Spin-off?
August 24, 2015

2015 has been a tough year for American Express. Its stock price and market cap have been pummeled, Costco waved goodbye (taking 10 percent of Amex cards with them), a Federal District Court judge decided it was OK for merchants to steer customers away from...

Karen Webster
To See The Future Of Retail, Look At Mobile Banking
August 17, 2015

Want to see the future of retail? Take a look at retail banking today. Sounds nuts, doesn’t it? But MPD CEO Karen Webster says that much of what has given retail banking the license to reinvent their physical footprint and reduce their operating costs is...

How To Reinvent Retail In Three Words
August 10, 2015

Coming out of the Retail Reinvention Summit last week, one thing became very clear: there are as many ways to approach the reinvention of retail as there are innovators interested in giving retailers a hand in doing it. MPD CEO Karen Webster says that really...

Payments At The Beach!
August 03, 2015

It’s the first week of August time and that can only mean one thing: It’s time to head to the beach. For those there – or on your way – you might be looking for a few things to keep your payments brain cells firing...

The Emperor’s New Currency
August 03, 2015

One hundred and seventy eight years ago, Hans Christian Andersen wrote a political satire disguised as a fairy tale. That tale told the story of two weavers who persuaded the Emperor to pay them to make him a suit of clothes so amazing that only...

Controversial
Will CurrentC Succeed? Here’s How We’ll Know
July 27, 2015

Bloomberg ran a story late Friday announcing the imminent launch of CurrentC, the merchant-owned and operated mobile payments scheme. Oh, you missed it? Maybe that was the point of releasing the news on a Friday in the summer. MPD CEO Karen Webster didn’t and offers...

The A, B, Cs Of PayPal’s Next Act
July 20, 2015

Today is “day one” of PayPal as an independent player, broken apart from the eBay that ignited some 13 years ago. And while most analysts believe that eBay has the tougher slog going forward solo, many also say that PayPal faces some pretty strong headwinds...

Karen Webster
What’s More Valuable – A Buy Button Or a Digital Wallet?
July 13, 2015

Mobile payments is becoming a pretty messy space. One might argue that it’s been a hot mess ever since the massive proliferation of mobile payments schemes began a few years ago, targeted mainly to convert mobile phone-toting consumers into mobile phone-paying consumers at the physical...

Want To Meet A Few Of The “Payments Revolutionaries” Who’ve Changed Payments?
July 06, 2015

Last Saturday, America celebrated the 239th anniversary of the outcome that these revolutionaries fought for: independence from the King, But the payments ecosystem is rife with its own “revolutionaries,” visionaries fighting for independence from a status quo that they believe is or was too limiting...