Welcome to What’s Trending In Payments – a weekly look at the most popular, irreverent and important stories the payments industry had to offer over the past five days.
Which companies grabbed the most headlines – for better or for worse – this week, and which topics have the industry abuzz with intrigue, laughter or disbelief? Featuring breakdowns from the PYMNTS.com staff and commentary by Karen Webster, here’s our take on what all of you payments peeps thought.
TOPIC ONE: The Least Honest Cities
Who’s the least honest city of all? To answer this question Reader’s Digest put “lost wallets” around cities and tabbed how many of them were returned. Each of wallet came with cash to steal and a cell phone number to return. If you want someone you can trust, head to Helsinki because a whopping 11 out of 12 wallets were returned with cash intact. Astonishingly, New York came in fourth. London was out in the middle of the pack. Lose your wallet in Lisbon though and kiss it good bye. Only one of the 12 wallets was returned—by a Dutch couple! Things are rough in Portugal but impoverished Mumbai came in second.
PYMNTS.com Commentary
So, you can’t easily lose your digital wallet since they ultimately live in the cloud. If your mobile falls out of your pocket on a stroll through Central Park a passerby might be able to use or hawk the handset, but your money is probably pretty safe. Even better, that poor passerby won’t be lured by your carelessness into being dishonest. So, that’s two really big problems that digital wallets solve.
Karen’s Commentary
Hey, did we just write the marketing plan/campaign positioning for accelerating the adoption of digital wallets on the new Apple iPhone 5S with the fingerprint lock or what? Will totally be expecting a shout-out if anyone, ahem, borrows it.
Top Tweet
TOPIC TWO: Square And Intuit: From Rivals To Partners
Chalk another one up for co-opetition as mPOS rivals Intuit and Square put the gloves aside to make life easier for SMBs that use Square to take payments and Intuit’s QuickBooks to do accounting. Let’s not get carried away with the lovefest as these companies are still likely to go at each other for acquiring small businesses that want to use mPOS.
PYMNTS.com Commentary
Lots going on financial services at Intuit. They’ve ditched their financial services group, which is reborn as Digital Insights, and are cozying up to the competition. Who knows what’s next?
Karen’s Commentary
Go figure.
Top Tweet
@gsterling: Square to integrate with Intuit’s QuickBooks but Intuit to continue to offer Square competitor GoPayment…
TOPIC 3: Men Go Wild Online
Men outdistance women in the race to online and mobile shopping according to recent eMarketer survey. Men shop online auction sites (stereotype: men like to compete) and boot up mobile apps (stereotype: men like toys) more than women. In spades for Millennials, but there’s age creep.
PYMNTS. Commentary: And men can do it on the couch with a beer and a football game. This is news?
Karen’s Commentary
Well, women compete too. Just with themselves. And in stores. For instance, how many more black pumps can I buy before having to buy more clothes to go with the new black shoes that I absolutely have to buy?
Top Tweet @CityBizRomy: Where are they men? They’re shopping online http://goo.gl/ZqvzP8
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