Category: Uncategorized

New Bank Consortium Created Around Akoya

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.

Akoya, plays a critical role in eliminated screen scraping, and also in managing the complex operations of many 3rd parties (think Intuit Quickbooks). Technically they serve as the common integration, permissions, contract and operations hub. Additionally they manage consistent access agreements (with each requester) giving customers an audit trail of who is requesting their data. 

Akoya’s standardization of access does bring into question why a 3rd Party would integrate to Plaid vs. Akoya. While both are committed to standards (ie FDX, OFX, …), Akoya will hold the operational keys for both consumer and bank on all API access. This is a brilliant bank move..

Interesting that the Banks did not put this asset with either EWS or TCH..

Apple Card

Short blog on the Apple card and Apple’s history in bringing ApplePay to market

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).

Continue reading “Apple Card”

Adios Visa Checkout

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).

Continue reading “Adios Visa Checkout”

Plaid – Quick Take

My quick read on Visa’s acquisition of Plaid

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. 

Continue reading “Plaid – Quick Take”

Big Moves in Payments

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)

Continue reading “Big Moves in Payments”

Payments and Rocket Science

My Forbes Article Last Week

What We Can Learn From Rocket Science About Closing The Sales-Marketing Loop

Payments plays a key role in trust, not only during the sale.. but also in providing transparency to merchants on marketing effectiveness. Sales is the ultimate report card on what happened.  Using this data in real time can double marketing effectiveness.

While Commerce Signals has taken me away from my Space Analyst stuff (see link), I’m very proud to know that my old team is landing Elon’s rockets (see Wiki).

Paypal is on a TEAR.. iZettle and hyperWALLET

Note: I’m not subjective on this one as I’m both an investor and former BOD member of hyperWallet. Of course I’m biased on all of my others too.. but just don’t have much of a financial stake.

Paypal has been on a tear in 2018, and is the leading payment stock performer in last 12 months – up over 60%. Continue reading “Paypal is on a TEAR.. iZettle and hyperWALLET”

Tokens and the Trojan Horse

I can’t believe I’ve been writing about this stuff for almost 10 yrs. If any of you have suffered through my 20 blogs (on tokens) I certainly don’t want to rehash anything.. just bring everyone up to speed on what I see as major issues on the horizon for V/MA, Issuers and Merchants.trojan-horse-small

Headline: Visa and Mastercard have made it easy for millions of businesses and billions of consumers to work together consistently. V/MA are a thing of beauty, creating incentives for multiple parties to invest in payments (and grow network). Continue reading “Tokens and the Trojan Horse”

PayPal surpasses Amex in Market Cap

WSJ Friday – Paypal Passes Amex in Market Cap

Paypal’s stock has been on an absolute tear this year up over 70% and pushing their market cap over $80B, with 55x P/E (compared to Visa’ 40x and Mastercard’s 36x)paypal-stock

eCommerce and payments are both hot sectors…. PayPal combines both. Most would tell you that the “real progress” for PayPal’s stock started July of last year with the V/MA peace treaties (blog).

Paypal’s biggest advantage is focus… they are 100% focused on payments. This gives them advantage in both innovation and execution, particularly when they are not dependent on getting the “permission” of anyone else. Venmo’s massive success is a great example of speed and finding a niche that no one else saw.

I tell Dan that I see 2 primary vectors for further growth: long tail (small retailers) and international (particularly small merchant acquiring). Wirecard sees the later as well given they just purchased Citi’s acquiring business in Asia.

Paypal’s competitive environment, the bundling of payments, and tech (new authentication/payment in OS ) creates a very challenging environment for growth. Their ability to focus and execute is what will differentiate them as a new tech standard is meaningless if no one uses it. Example is Apple Pay in store continues to be a flop.. where as apple pay in-app is a crushing success.

What most impresses me this week? Paypal’s partnerships (see Dan present on this topic – CNBC). Parnterships are a HUGE driver of volume (look at eBay’s impact). Consumers just want the easiest/default payment approach.

Congrats to Bill, Dan and team.. making this progress while REMAKING a technical infrastructure in a highly competitive environment is tough!

CORRECTION
In a post entitled “What to expect from Money in 2020” posted on October 5, 2017, I stated that Bank of America had “pulled out of their relationship with Cardlytics”. Cardlytics has informed me that this is false and that there is no change in the relationships with Bank of America or Citi. I
apologize and regret this error.

I look forward to getting another update on the CLO space from both banks this quarter.  It sure is nice that someone reads page 3 of a blog on Money 2020 to notice this stuff. I’m always open to correcting errors or omissions.