Surrendering in face of an onslaught of consumer outrage, Bank of America raised the white flag yesterday and jettisoned its plan to slap consumers with a $5 monthly fee for purchasing with their debit cards. Chase, Wells, Regions, and SunTrust were some of the banks that had already cried uncle not before long.
The $5 debit […]

Starting last Saturday, Oct. 1, large banks had the interchange fee income they could get from merchants when their customers used their debit cards slashed 45% as a result of the Durbin Amendment. These large banks will lose roughly $7 billion in revenue annually as a result.
Most people used to get their debit cards for […]

Ah, September! It’s the beginning of fall: back to school, football, sweaters here in Boston, and now apparently, the race to the physical point of sale – mobile payments style. PayPal let the world in on its mobile payments vision two weeks ago at an invitation-only forum in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. Google launched its […]

To integrate, or not to integrate: that is the question. Or at least the one that has hung over Steve Jobs’ career that, sadly, seems to have come to an end.
By the late 1980s, Jobs was considered a fool outdone by the wily Bill Gates. Jobs – obsessed with the beauty of the Mac, with […]

Sometimes it helps to be reminded of the stunningly obvious. You know, like if you want to lose weight, why not just eat less and exercise more? My favorite business example is don’t compete where there’s lots of competition. Blue Ocean Strategy became an enormous business best seller by making that “oh, duh” point.
So here […]

Next to the content of bin Laden’s hard drive, what I’d most like to see today are the PowerPoint decks that led AT&T and Verizon to actually think they could start a mobile payments network. My guess is that between the two companies and their management consultants the following questions weren’t addressed or were glossed […]

If you want to start a platform business in payments — or in any other area that involves the coordination of multiple stakeholders — you’d better have an ignition plan. Once you start the business, you are facing a countdown for achieving critical mass and launching the business successfully. If you haven’t reached critical mass […]

Introduction
Many Americans, feeling chunky and lethargic from their Thanksgiving to New Year’s Eve eating binges, will be making resolutions to exercise more and eat less during 2011. Some will sign up for a health club. They could get day and monthly passes. But so confident they are that this will be the year they will […]

As part of our 2011 kick off, PYMNTS.com has turned to its cast of experts on the Market Platform Dynamics team for a few of their payments New Year’s resolutions. In addition to sharing their thoughts, we would love for you to share your payments resolutions, here.
I will treat merchants as valued customers.
I have taken […]

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 […]