Big news today, with Chase entering in to a 10 year expanded partnership with Visa to create a ‘differentiated experience’ for its merchants and consumers. I would warn anyone thinking “offers and deals” when they hear “differentiated experience” – because I believe we are running low on merchants who have a perennial interest in offering endless discounts to its clientele. Continue reading
Drop Labs
Drop Labs – Skating to where the puck's going to be.
Filed under Retail …
GoogleWallet & Citi – Dance with the one that brung ya…
At midnight yesterday, Google sent me an email on how the new GoogleWallet update will now allow me to store my “Citi MasterCard” online. As other Google Wallet aficionados may recall (Bueller..? Bueller..?), Citi was the lone holdout in Google Wallet’s journey to the cloud and its race to conformity. Though to the untrained eye the Google Wallet app experience was mostly uniform irrespective of the card used to pay at the point-of-sale, behind the scenes, if the Citi MasterCard was used, Google had to do things one way versus another way for the rest of the brood. Continue reading
MCX – MerChants reduX
MCX – MerChants reduX: Recently, I spent an hour chatting with friends of mine who launched a small business about what worked and what didn’t. When the topic veered off to card acceptance costs, the reaction was visceral – one of absolute loathe and the struggle to understand the myriad ‘Do’s and Don’ts’ of what cards to accept, and how to accept them. In the end, they had swore off Amex cards because the acceptance cost was above their product margins. I told them about Square and how it could allow them to continue taking Amex and pay a lower rate. But that had me thinking about MCX and what it could mean for small businesses. The post that follows is a collection of thoughts around MCX, why it deserves respect, and yet how it is indeed mortal and bleeds like all others. Continue reading
There and Back again – A customer journey with Paypal
I remember creating my Paypal account back in 2000 when an acquaintance of mine wanted to split the lunch tab with me, and sent me $20 via email a couple of days later. I remember hurriedly opting to cash out via check, having little trust in a newfangled payment startup. That $20 actually languished in said Paypal account (despite issuing a check that ended up never being cashed) for another couple of years before I actually did something with that money and my Paypal account. What follows is the rest of that journey. Continue reading
Let’s talk about Fraud
I am in Vegas and I am fascinated by my room key. This is not the usual “insert in to the slot, wait for it turn green or hear it chime” key cards, these are “tap and hold to a door scanner till the door opens” RFID key card. It is befitting the event I am about to attend – Money2020 – the largest of its kind bringing together over 2000 mobile money afficionados, strategists and technologists from world over for a couple of days to talk about how payment modalities are shifting and the impact of these shifts to existing and emerging players. Away from all the excitement of product launches, I hope some will be talking about one of the major barriers for consumer adoption towards alternate payment modalities such as mobile – security and fraud. Continue reading
Wake up, Google!
The last few weeks/months, we have all seen a glut of news and opinion pieces mourning the decline of Google, as if it were already dead and buried. I offer a slightly different viewpoint below, and a more focused one, around its mobile commerce strategy. There, I believe Google is now at an inflection point, where the choices it make shall determine if it could successfully transition from online to mobile, or whether it will resemble Microsoft in its glory days, failing to understand or monetize on the opportunities that lay before it in the early days of internet. Continue reading
Vinod Khosla on Retail & Emerging Payments
It was Vinod Khosla’s Cliff notes on “What makes entrepreneurs entrepreneurial” that turned me on to Dr. Saras Sarasvathy’s brilliant paper and other works on effectual reasoning vs causal reasoning. Likewise, he is prescient in his post on Techcrunch about the areas in mobile and internet today that are silent performers. And alongside the well known areas and ideas such as Big Data, Data Reduction, Internet of things, I found the following section(s) that I have reproduced below: Continue reading
iPhone 5, NFC & iWallet – Pick Any Two
Being on Week 3 of a self imposed Google Wallet embargo, I had instead been writing about the ongoing turf wars between Platform providers and Carriers, which is starting to sound like an episode of ‘Mob Wives’. Though the bulk of it was to be focused on Android, it became impossible to ignore rumors around iPhone 5 and NFC. Now that iPhone 5 is a mere couple of quarters away, the rumor-mill has started to churn yet again on the possible inclusion of NFC along with iWallet – Apple’s own mobile wallet initiative. Most of these indicate that an Apple mobile wallet initiative equipped with NFC is a sure bet. I on the other hand (and ever the doubting Thomas) – am not so sure. For the rest of this post I shall lay out reasons why I believe NFC and iWallet are far from a sure bet to be included in iPhone 5. Along with it comes the caveat that my Crystal Palantir that helps me see in to Infinite Loop, Cupertino has malfunctioned, which has left me equally in the dark as to what Apple may choose to do in Q4 2012. Whatever happens, I have attempted to paint the broad outlines of an Apple mobile wallet strategy, regardless of it being proximity or cloud based. Continue reading
Google Wallet, Meet me at Camera 3
I really didn’t intend this to be my next post on the DROP Labs blog. I was not planning to write about Google Wallet – again. I have an unhealthy obsession towards it, evidence of which can be found here, here, and here. After the last one, which chronicled my On the road experiences, I pretty much decided not to write about it for a while. There were other things I wanted to write about – Issuer strategy on mobile wallets, Ongoing turf battles between Platform providers/Manufacturers vs Carriers, and then it happened again. Continue reading
Retailers – Wake up and smell the napalm
Amazon seems unstoppable. The online juggernaut is poised to grab additional market share from local retailers this holiday season by equipping its smartphone app with a $15 incentive (or call it what it is – a bribe) for customers. It is available to anyone who while perusing the aisles of a local retailer in search of their object of desire, instead of adding it their cart, scans the barcode, finds it on Amazon and buys it outright from the online retailer. Something equivalent to being enticed to use your wife’s cellphone to call your love interest. This surely has infuriated the ranks of retailers (even those with an online presence but have a bone to pick with Amazon) and has led to cries of unfair practices. The fact that Amazon does not have to worry about paying sales tax (outside of California at least) adds more fuel to the fire. Continue reading