Last week saw a number of important developments at Google Wallet. Let’s recap what we’ve learned: Osama Bedier, the Head of Google Wallet, left the company. Google Wallet scrapped its plans to introduce a physical card to support purchases at the physical POS. Then, at Google I/O Developer conference, the company made a series of [...]

Yesterday Barclaycard launched a new service in the UK called Bespoke Offers. The website will feature a range of deals from some of the UK’s largest retailers, including Tesco, British Airways, Virgin and Starbucks. Participating merchants will be able to target offers to consumers, who will be able to select the offers they like via the [...]

I presented at the CARTES America conference in Las Vegas last week. It was a great event with many interesting conference sessions and good opportunities to network. One of the highlights for me was the opening keynote with panelists representing various merchant organisations, such as Merchant Advisory Group (MRA), National Restaurant Asociation (NRA) and The Association for Convenience and [...]

The UK government’s ban for merchants from imposing “excessive” surcharges when customers use their debit and credit cards to pay began on Saturday, April 6th. Card surcharges have become a hotly debated topic over recent years. Many consumers feel it is unfair that they have to go through a complicated checkout process only to find out that there [...]

When Visa restructured in 2007-2008, Visa USA, Visa Canada, and Visa International were merged into the new public company. Visa Europe became a separate company owned by its member banks. An article in Wall Street Journal this week claimed that the European banks were ready to sell their stake in Visa Europe back to Visa Inc. I am not [...]

I just came back from three weeks of being on the road. I ran a workshop on merchant-funded rewards at Merchant Payments Ecosystem event in Berlin, presented on mobile payments at Celent’s own (and very successful!) Insight and Innovation Day in Boston last week, and managed to squeeze a holiday on the snow in between. [...]

In my recent report on Digital Wallets, I discussed a number of players which while still keeping their cards close to their chests, have a potential to significantly influence the payments market. One of them is Apple, which made headlines recently with their patent for cash distribution without ATMs – see Bob Meara’s excellent blog and my related [...]

Do you feel annoyed when having decided what to buy, you get to the checkout only to find out that the price has increased because the merchant slapped an extra fee for paying by card? I know, I do. The card networks know that as well, which is why they have been insisting on a “no surcharge” rule – i.e. [...]

On January 15th, Green Dot, a US-based company best known for its prepaid cards, announced the launch of GoBank, a full FDIC-insured bank account designed for and available via mobile phone. Promoting itself as “a bank with tomorrow’s technology”, it does indeed come with a host of attractive features, such as a mobile-only account opening, checking the [...]

We are all familiar with the power of a good headline – it grabs our attention and compels us to read the rest of the story. In the world of printed newspapers, front-page headlines are there to sell papers. And it seems that ability to write a witty headline is a pre-requisite to getting a job at any [...]