Couldn’t resist the opportunity to weigh in, briefly, on the story that had the Web in an uproar yesterday. Seems as though Verizon may be giving Google the proverbial lump of coal a little early this year by saying ixnay to its Wallet. (Read Verizon’s latest statement.) Now, having the largest mobile operator in the […]

The holiday season is upon us. I know, wasn’t it just July? That aside, ‘tis the season of parties, gift buying and giving, holiday songs and TV and movie classics that put the meaning of the holiday season in the proper context. 
And the holiday season wouldn’t be complete without at least one viewing of that […]

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 […]

Mobile. Everywhere. Opportunity. Everywhere. This was the theme of the GigaOm Mobilize 2011 conference held one week ago in San Francisco. Over two days during 50 sessions, participants debated the impact of the mash-up of cloud computing and the mobile Web for driving new opportunities for everyone in mobile - certainly a familiar theme for […]

Over last two days, I handicapped PayPal and Google in their race with each other and potential players to grab a big share of the emerging mobile transaction platform ecosystem. Today, I’m going to share some final thoughts.
One thing that I think that the Starbucks mobile experience has shown us is how willing consumers are […]

Yesterday, I gave my thoughts on what PayPal had going for it in its race to win or at least get bronze in the mobile transaction platform race. Here’s my take on Google.
Consumers: There are a couple of important things to look at here. First, Google is the largest search engine on the planet, has […]

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 […]

OK, having just written a little analysis on the deal space, I was feeling pretty prescient about the Groupon IPO delay story that popped up literally hours after my story was published on PYMNTS.com. No, it had nothing to do with Andrew Mason reading my piece and deciding they needed a strategic about face, but, […]

Could it be that the bloom is off of the daily deal rose? The news out of daily deal land these last few weeks has been grim. It has made those last few lazy, hazy days of summer, well, a little crazy too, if you are in the deal business or thinking about getting into […]