New Bank Consortium Created Around Akoya

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WSJ Thursday 2/20 – Fidelity Spinning out Akoya

Much more than a spin out.. 12-18 banks got together and purchased Akoya with FMR retaining some of the equity. The new entity will have a BOD and Advisory committee comprised of banks. 

Akoya is the “data middleman” between bank platforms and aggregates. For example, if JPMC or Bank of America had an existing OFX service, Akoya could wrap that bespoke integration, add tokenized credentials and be the common integration point for PLAID, Intuit or Yodlee.

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TCH – Real Time Payments

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NOTE – Aug 2022 – this blog is a tad wrong about the Zelle settlement process. Zelle uses its own organic settlement system from the Pariter acquisition and provides TCH with a net settlement file some of which may be processed on RTP.

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Its been 18 mo since my last TCH update. As a quick refresh, the reason everyone cares about the TCH project, is that TCH is the ONLY place that the top 6 bank CEOs get together to collaborate on payments. TCH operates CHIPS (the largest private ACH network in the world), settling around $1.5T of payments PER DAY (think stock market, B2B, V, MA… everything). Within the ACH scheme every member bank has a settlement account and a nightly Net Settlement process is run. 

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Payments 2020 – MVP Continued Domination?

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I’m back to blogging after a 5 year hiatus… The CEO thing is rather all consuming. Glad to have an exit so I can get back to my fellow payment geeks. 

What to blog about first? Given we are in new decade I thought about writing some grand predictions.  But rather than look forward, we must spend a little time in the past, as the past 10 years have been JUST AMAZING in payments. I’m calling this blog series “payment growth vectors” where I hope to recap what has transpired in payments (history) to provide a trajectory for evaluation of the future course.  

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Apple Card

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21 Jan 2020

iPhone showing Apple Card and stats.

I love my Apple Card.. both the physical card – with its wonderful “feel” – as well as the virtual card and how it is integrated into the Apple Pay Wallet. These payment jewels are all part of a Services Business growing at 20% CAGR that could be worth $650B by next year (MotleyFool).

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Adios Visa Checkout

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17 January – Good news.. the right thing just happened.

branding nascar

This week we finally saw the “official death” of Visa Checkout and Mastercard’s “Masterpass”. Do you remember all those Superbowl commercials with Arizona wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald? Per my April 2018 blog, this “branded button” approach makes no sense at all at a time where Visa/MA are positioned to play a much more critical position as the central token directory. This means we will no longer see the “NASCAR like Checkout” I referenced 5 yrs ago when JPMC launched the much ridiculed ChasePay. Visa’s top 5 brand will no longer have an appended “checkout” on it (which no one used or understood).

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Plaid – Quick Take

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I’m back to blogging after a successful exit last month. The Plaid acquisition is a great way for me to jump back in. Why read this? A key to understanding payments, banking and data is to balance historical knowledge with a network of people that know what is really happening behind the scenes. As the former head of two direct banks, former Senior Director of Oracle’s advanced technology solution’s practice and Yodlee’s first customer I have an informed perspective on the market for this one. 

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Big Moves in Payments

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21 March 2019

Happy First Day of Spring! I don’t know how many people still read this silly blog. I’m in a CEO time warp and just realized I haven’t written anything since NOVEMBER!! This will be a short blog with some random thoughts.

Big moves in Payments this quarter.

  1. Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Global Payments and others are at ALL TIME HIGHS today.
  2. Worldpay to be acquired by FIS for $43B
  3. First Data to be acquired by Fiserv for $22B (all stock)
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