Despite years of predictions suggesting that cash would one day disappear, recent data suggests cash is not only here to stay, but its usage may in fact be on the rise.  Many pundits have long believed that dirty, “inefficient” paper money would soon be replaced by plastic cards, mobile payments, and possibly even biometric payments […]

On the 11th Day of Christmas my true love gave to me … 100 Facebook credits and told me I could go crazy buying virtual stuff for my farm on Farmville. Frankly, it was not what I expected to receive from my true love. I’m really not the kind of girl who is into farming, […]

On the tenth day of Christmas millions of merchants got a proposal from Santa Fed Claus to cut the fees they pay debit card issuers by as much as 84%, putting up to  $13.6 billion in their pocket and a smile as big as boy getting his first Xbox on their faces.  Meanwhile thousands of […]

Point of Sale (POS) payment acceptance was once a relatively sleepy, almost commodity-like extension of the merchant acquiring business, with a handful of standard terminals manufactured by Verifone, Hypercom and Ingenico that were sold and deployed via merchant acquirers and ISOs.  These POS systems were joined by the large, integrated software solutions provided by IBM, […]

As you wait for Santa to come and fill your stocking this holiday season, you may be thinking of what might be the best toys and gadgets for that most demanding of technologists in your household, namely…yourself.  Perhaps you have bought every new gadget that comes out in the marketplace, including tech toys that were […]

On this seventh day of Christmas, are you, too, having trouble finding those elusive seven swans a-swimmin’? Well, it just might be that one of the thousands of online deal and/or group buying sites might have just what you are looking for at a price that is at least 50% off the suggested retail purchase […]

On the fifth day of Christmas, in the United States, Santa gave payments small businesses. Sure, small is beautiful as the blockbuster 1973 book by that name insisted. But even better when it comes to businesses—small is a lot!  There were almost 28 million of them in 2007. Now, about 22 million of them didn’t […]

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s payment network consolidation in the US and Europe, resulted in a world with only 3 global credit card brands – Visa, MasterCard and American Express, supported by a host of regional/ local debit solutions.  However, the desire to avoid the dominance of US brands and expand their domestic card markets, […]

2011 will be the year that social commerce begins to take root on Facebook with solutions that are both merchant and customer friendly.
To be fair, pundits have been talking about “shopping on Facebook” since about 2006 when it first opened its platform to developers and concurrently introduced two new products (to an overwhelmingly negative […]

PYMNTS.com is presenting its annual Twelve Days of Christmas Series. Yes, we’re early, but we figured that during the real twelve days most of you will be sipping eggnog, playing with your iPads, and spending time with your loved ones. So we’ve decided to make the clock tick twelve work days before Christmas.
For […]