June, 2018

• 29 June

  Notes on Sports Betting

  

  As soon as we heard that the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down a federal law that prohibited states from legalizing sports betting, we began to wonder how much of an opportunity this landmark ruling held out for the payments industry. The results of our curiosity on the matter start …
• 1 June

  P2P’s Newtonian Reaction

  

  Call it Newtonian market dynamics. Sir Isaac Newton propounded the physical law that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Now, in the suddenly vibrant market for person-to-person payments, we’re seeing an analogous reaction unfold. As our cover story on page 22 explains, financial institutions have made …

May, 2018

• 1 May

  Some Promising Signs for Crypto Acceptance

  

  Seven months ago, our piece for this space was headlined, “So, Where Are We With Bitcoin?” The concern then was a steady climb in Bitcoin’s value and whether it constituted a bubble. The associated question was whether the cryptocurrency could ever establish itself as a means of payment, either online …

April, 2018

• 2 April

  An Encouraging Start

  

  After years of ever-tightening regulation in payments and other financial services, it comes as a relief to witness some of the encouraging steps Congress and the Trump administration are taking to unshackle innovation. As our Acquiring story starting on page 20 documents, movement is afoot on a broad front to …

February, 2018

• 28 February

  A Study in Overreaction

  

  We often refer to the “wisdom of the market,” investing the stock market with powers of insight almost amounting to clairvoyance. The market does, after all, efficiently compile the sentiments of entire regiments of investors into one tidy number, the stock price. We reflected on this collective wisdom last month …
• 1 February

  The Allure of Brick And Mortar

  

  Nobody knows for sure, but some time this year Amazon.com Inc. could unleash a double-barreled assault on the world of physical-store payments. As our cover story this month lays out, the Seattle colossus has already introduced Amazon Pay Places, a mobile order-ahead application for Amazon Pay, and is working to …

January, 2018

• 2 January

  Serving the Small Merchant

  

  Seldom in the history of electronic payments has the spotlight shone quite so intensely on small merchants as it does now. Everybody, it seems, wants to sign up the so-called SMB—the small and medium-size business. When Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) put up just over $1 billion last month to …

December, 2017

• 1 December

  ‘A Very Complicated, Hot Mess’

  

  The United States seems to excel at developing new electronic payment systems, but it struggles with commercializing them. Oh yes, debit card payments are nearly universal now, but if you were following this business back in the ‘80s, when networks, banks, and merchants were looking at the matter of ATM …

October, 2017

• 31 October

  The Mobile Check

  

  Periodically in this space we comment on mobile payments. After all, we report on this technology pretty regularly both in this magazine and in our daily newsletter, Digital Transactions News. We do so because it seems likely that, sooner or later, most if not all digital payments will initiate from …
• 1 October

  So, Where Are We With Bitcoin?

  

  If you get rich betting on a certain currency, does that make that currency real? Or must people and businesses agree to accept it as payment for goods and services? If these are the criteria for establishing whether Bitcoin is “real” or not, the 8-year-old cryptocurrency has passed the first …