The Catalyst Code

Ignorance could delay contactless-payments adoption according to a heading in Cardline, which quotes some wags who suggest that contactless isn’t going as fast as it might because of “the technology’s unfamiliarity among merchants and consumers.” (CardLine, subscription required).Of course it is hard to tell whether potential customers don’t choose something because they are ignorant or […]

Card rewards are going to disappear and fees are going to return according to a recent research report Disruption in the Payments World. That’s a distinct possibility. Between the interchange fee lawsuits and Congressional pressure for the card associations to get rid of interchange fees it is possible that the US could go the way […]

My post last week Blah, Blah Mobile… Blah, Blah Mobile really prompted a lot of discussion about the topic of mobile payments – and maybe even touched a few raw nerves in the process. I thought I would follow up with a few observations given the discussions that took place last week on and off […]

How many of you are growing weary of the same old proclamations from analysts on mobile payments? Citing “the need to work together so that everyone can win” Javelin remains bullish on NFC technology and cites contactless as the enabler for e-wallets that contain everything from cards to photos to medical records.
A recent […]

As he said in an interview with American Banker (subscription required), Wachovia’s Steve Boehm is taking the sensible man’s approach to contactless: wait and see if it takes off and get on the bandwagon when it does. Contactless–like smart cards–is unfortunately a technology in search of a business model to support it.
Some banks and […]

The TowerGroup has just released a new report suggesting that banks rethink their loyalty programs for cards. I tend to agree that existing loyalty card programs need to be retooled, but I’m not sure I’d go with the TowerGroup recommendations to use loyalty rewards to encourage good credit behavior in the hard times that […]

The newest general purchase payment card scheme in the US–Discover, which was launched by Sears in 1986–has just bought the oldest general purchase payment card scheme in the U.S. (and elsewhere)–Diners Club, which launched the modern card in 1950 in Manhattan.
Diners Club is the poster child for why first-mover advantages sound good in […]

Last Wednesday, in a statement lost on many of us in the clamor of the Visa IPO the day before, the biometrics company Pay By Touch regretfully announced that it would be shuttering its doors following nearly six years since its first biometric transaction in 2002.
Several factors were responsible for bringing the company to […]

American Express is ditching the fob–the contactless slugs with a contactless chip that people could hang off their key chains to pay with. The company line is that people prefer mag stripe cards and Amex is pushing those with a chip. But the reason why people don’t like fobs–MPD found hardly anyone did in […]

With its ejection from Piggly Wiggly (not to mention its bankruptcy), Pay By Touch is pretty much dead as a new payment system.
It all sounded so clever. People registered their finger and associated it with a method of payment. Then they could pay at participating merchants like Piggly by pressing their finger on a […]