Debit Card Growth/Preference is Global

Last Wednesday I blogged about how Debit Dominates China's Bank Card Market accounting for a whopping 93.4 percent of the market total! This week, APACS announced that in the U.K. debit cards continue to be consumers first choice in 2007 accounting for 72% of of plastic card transactions in the U.K. market.Yesterday, I talked about Canada's shift to Chip and PIN, and a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that even Malta is jumping on the Chip...
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Posted by John B. Frank Monday, June 30, 2008 0 comments

Canada Going the Way of Chip and PIN

To combat fraud and encourage more consumers to shop online with more confidence, Visa, MasterCard and Canadian banks are upgrading more than 60 million credit and debit cards by adding a 13-millimetre square chip. While the magnetic stripe on the back of the card will remain, the real power of the card rests with the chip, a self-contained processor programmed with account information and an "encrypted key" which, with a PIN, secures the...
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Posted by John B. Frank Sunday, June 29, 2008 0 comments

Bill Gates Last Day...A Look Back at the Beginning

Back in 1984, (not the George Orwelian one)right out of college I took a job selling PC's, although back then they were pretty much just word processors. A single disk drive, capable of running 640k diskettes would set you back about $4000. IBM was the King and MS-DOS was the new operating system of choice. My "Office" had "Windows", but not a computers.My father had taken a job a year earlier with a company that bought Heathkit. It was...
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Posted by John B. Frank Friday, June 27, 2008 0 comments

Interchange PAIN Can Be "A"lleviated with PIN-terchange

NACS Takes on the "PAIN" of Interchange... Editor's Note: Online Retailers can alleviate what the NACS refers to as "That PAIN" by simply eliminating the "A" in PAIN... converting the PAIN to "PIN" as PIN-terchange costs 50% less and is up to 10 times more secure!In a press release, the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) says that "the nation’s 115,000-plus convenience stores will communicate their outrage over devastating...
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Posted by John B. Frank 0 comments

There ARE Some Things Money CAN Buy.

I've got a "New Campaign Idea" for MasterCard... Here goes:Screw with Wal Mart: $1.0 BillionScrew with American Express: $1.8 BillionScrew with Discover: $3.0 Billion?IPO to cover damages: Priceless!"Under the terms of the agreement, MasterCard will pay American Express up to $1.8 billion. This follows an earlier agreement with Visa to settle similar claims for up to $2.25 billion. Subject to certain performance criteria, American Express...
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Posted by John B. Frank Wednesday, June 25, 2008 0 comments

Debit Cards Dominate China's Bank Card Market

As the U.S. grapples with soaring gas prices, many pundits have put the blame for the rise on the shoulders of the frenetically expanding economies in China and India. There's just too much demand and the market can't keep up, they say.Want proof of just how fast that Chinese economy is growing? Try this: The total number of credit cards in China nearly doubled in the past year, according to the People's Bank of China, which is the nation's...
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Posted by John B. Frank 0 comments

Blogging More Than a Marketing Tactic

"It seems like every company has a blog section of its own, and is also interested in what the blogosphere is saying about it," said Paul Verna, senior analyst at eMarketer.Word-of-mouth is still a powerful marketing tactic, and since influential bloggers are so effective at spreading the word about their likes and dislikes, blogger demographics continue to matter. So, excluding major businesses and splogs, who blogs now?Although most researchers...
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Posted by John B. Frank Monday, June 23, 2008 0 comments

Payment Card Reporting = Bad Idea?

Payment-Card Reporting Nonsense...Another expensively bad idea from congressional Democrats.By Phil KerpenLast week the House Ways and Means Committee marked up the so-called Alternative Minimum Tax Relief Act of 2008. As expected, the Democrats are proposing several permanent tax hikes in exchange for a provision to protect the middle class from the unintended consequences of the AMT. What wasn’t expected was the addition of a nasty new regulation.The bill now includes a $30.98 billion capital-gains tax increase on the carried...
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Posted by John B. Frank 0 comments

Revisting Gartner's Report on Consumers Preference for PIN Based Transactions

Banks and credit card issuers have put significant efforts into marketing contactless and signature-based debit card payments, but they have failed to win over U.S. consumers, according to a survey by Gartner. This is important news for online and brick-and-mortar businesses. Consumers prefer alternative payment types -- such as a debit card and PIN -- that earn banks less revenue, but which consumers believe are more secure.“Despite significant marketing campaigns by banks and card issuers to steer consumers towards using debit...
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Posted by John B. Frank Thursday, June 19, 2008 0 comments

Barron's on Amazon Online Payments Plans

Is Amazon Planning To Go Head-to-Head With PayPal?Posted by Eric SavitzAmazon.com (AMZN) has been aggressively rolling out a variety of Web-based services, including on-demand computing power and data storage. Could the company’s next move be to go after eBay (EBAY) subsidiary PayPal’s dominant franchise on online payments?Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Derek Brown asserts in a research note this afternoon that Amazon “may soon launch a PayPal-esque...
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Posted by John B. Frank 0 comments

Online Consumer Payments Report Available

Research and Markets has released an Online Consumer Payments Report in which it claims to examine the Past, the Present and the Future of Online Payments. Here's an overview:Online consumer payment volumes continue to grow rapidly as more consumers warm to the online experience and begin to purchase goods and services online with an increasing appetite. As a result, the online consumer payments market is becoming competitive, fast moving...
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Posted by John B. Frank Wednesday, June 18, 2008 0 comments

PULSE Releases ATM Safety Tips for Summer Travelers

Discover's Pulse EFT Network Provides Safety TipsPress Release: Monday June 16, 2008ATM Safety Tips to Follow as You Withdraw Cash for Your Next Summer Road Trip or Anytime Throughout the YearHOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- As part of its annual ATM & Debit Card Safety Awareness Month, this week the PULSE® debit network releases ATM Safety Tips. Although debit is a secure and convenient form of payment,...
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Posted by John B. Frank Monday, June 16, 2008 0 comments

Wow...Talk About Disruption in the Payments World

It's early here but I (still) got Georgia on my mind... This from Jeff Haynie's "Introspection" Blog...There has been quite a bit of debate in the past few days about the 2008 GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition here in Atlanta. Scott Burkett was spot on in my opinion and was one of the first to publicaly call this insanity out. There were some tweets by some local entrepreneurs and Lance Weatherby attempted to quell the crowd with his...
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Posted by John B. Frank Friday, June 13, 2008 0 comments

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Kapersky Calls for Mass Adoption of Card Readers

Kapersky Calls for Mass Adoption of Card Readers