Category Archives: Data

PayPal Advertising?

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Yesterday PayPal announced PayPal Ads Manager

“PayPal Ads Manager gives tens of millions of small businesses access to high-margin ad revenue while creating valuable new inventory for advertisers of all sizes.”

“Retail media networks have become a multi-billion-dollar industry that generates high-margin revenue by enabling businesses to sell advertising on small business websites and apps”

As the Founder/CEO of Commerce Signals we brought card data to market primarily for measurement (now part of TU). It gave us a view of how advertisers performed and what data was valuable. I went into great detail on the challenges of  JPM’s Retail Media network in my June 2025 blog  Understanding How Payments Data Plays in Advertising (2025), and more generically in my 2021 blog Data Games. 

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APIs – More Banks to Follow JPM – Pricing Implications

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As I stated in my Monday blog, Open Banking is dead in the US. Pay by Bank (and open banking) is effectively dead in the US. This follows JPMorgan’s move to push out its new API pricing structure to data aggregators and other third parties in the first week of July. This development comes as the “new” CFPB seeks to vacate its Section 1033 rule.

The latest is that we can expect most other major banks to roll out their own pricing within the next two weeks. These banks will have different pricing, as there was no coordination among banks. JPM has always been the most forward in protecting consumer data. A new pricing floor for data access has been established. Now that other analysts have weighed in, I can recap the pricing framework. 

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Understanding Payments Data – How it Plays Today and the Near Term Future

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© Starpoint LLP, 2024. No part of this site, blog.starpointllp.com, may be reproduced or retransmitted, in whole or in part, in any manner without the permission of the copyright owner. Also, see our Legal/Disclaimer (this is a highly opinionated and partially informed blog). Enterprise readers, please consider Enterprise Subscription (not required for Starpoint Clients). 

I thought it was time for a payment data update. Given Paypal’s Feb 2025 investor day, JPM’s “Retail Media Network” now re-labled Media Solutions and JPM’s lawsuit against Transunion/Argus. My perspective is formed from my 8 yrs as CEO/Founder of Commerce Signals. I’ll touch on signals, intent and agentic at the end. 

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eReciepts – The Politics and Economics of SKU Data

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An update to my Data Games – 2021

© Starpoint LLP, 2025. No part of this site, blog.starpointllp.com, may be reproduced or retransmitted in whole or in part in any manner without the permission of the copyright owner.

Electronic receipts (eReceipts) COULD transform the retail landscape by offering numerous benefits to consumers and businesses. With the potential to enhance digital wallets, improve customer experiences, empower AI agents, and increase advertising effectiveness. However, the widespread adoption and sharing SKU-level data face several challenges, most of which are NOT technical. Today, I’m providing an overview of key business and economic challenges of unlocking SKU data.

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Winning in Network of Networks: Collaboration

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My largest holdings are card networks, and I’m very keen on their continued growth and sustainability of competitive advantage. My confidence is based on five broad themes. 

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Networks, Value Assembly and Organizational Structures

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Bull Case For Visa and Mastercard 

Very Long Blog.  4 Page Exec Summary. Feedback appreciated. This blog has been my “blocker” as I’ve iterated over the last 7 months. I’ve thinned this down from 31 pages (which no one would read) to 23. No I will never write something this big again.

The thoughts below are an update to my 2016 Small Wins, where I outlined how the forces that have driven scale, and shaped organizations, are atrophying (Transaction Cost Economics, asset intensity, information intensity, finance… etc). Paul Graham’s calls this change Refragmentation, I call it Transformation of Networks.

It’s as if the gravitational constant (the big G) is changing and new forces are driving the formation of new networks influenced by a rapidly evolving world of “weak links”. Information intensity has moved beyond “tweaking” 100 yr old business models to transform the design of industries, communities and people.

Whereas the 2016 blog was more about the “possibilities” enabled by tech, this blog is about the reality of how things will evolve.  

© Starpoint LLP, 2024. No part of this site, blog.starpointllp.com, may be reproduced or retransmitted, in whole or in part, in any manner without the permission of the copyright owner. Also see our Legal/Disclaimer (this is a highly opinionated and partially informed blog).

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Plaid fights for relevance

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Side note. I have 4 blogs just about ready to go in the next week.

  • Value Structures and Organizational Models. This one has been in the works too long and has backed everything else up
  • V/MA – Break out growth opportunities (still my largest holdings).
  • Updated view on alternate payment schemes
  • Banks and “owning identity”. Ownership and control is not the problem. Getting others to value their role and rules is.
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Bank Transformation – Actions for Banks to Succeed in the Storm of Disruption

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A Framework for Collaboration – Taking Part in Consumer Journeys

16 Page Blog – 3 Page Exec Summary 

Part 2 of Future of Retail Banking (2023). This blog has been sitting at 60% for 2 months now. Sorry for the delay.  A bull case for V/MA and service expansion.

A storm is brewing that will dwarf the impact the internet (V1/V2) had on established business models. There are multiple transformations occurring simultaneously: AI/ML, Web3, Digital ID, DLT, open mandates, FinTech, Wallets, ….etc. (see Web3 and Small Wins). While large orchestrators and big tech dominate today due to their virtuous cycles, new forces push for the “break up” of Big Tech and centralized data stores to make the internet more democratic and more privacy friendly.

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Open Banking in US – Quick Take CPFB Proposed Rule

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Before listening to anyone on this topic its important to get a feeling for experience. I’ve been fortunate to run two of the largest online banks: Citi and Wachovia. Wachovia was the very first customer of Yodlee (1999), a service our customers loved. My banks were also scraped endlessly, representing over 30% of our traffic and 20% of our call center complaints. We were also the largest PFM bank (think MS Money and Quicken), keeping our OFX servers up and running was key. After my banking life I spent time rearchitecting payment data flows from point of sale to payment at Google. Then spent 8 years creating Commerce Signals, a payment data business. 
CPFB’s Proposed Rule

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Consumer Data Bureau?

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Short blog today as opposed to the 9 page monster in identity and attribution Friday.  Today I’m providing my thoughts on what a consumer data bureau would look like.  Summary: Banks have a unique opportunity to create a consumer data bureau and be the key “switch” for regulated and permissioned data. Will they seize it?

Per blog yesterday, everyone has a partial view of you based upon their observations and what you trust them to hold (see Payments and Observer Effect). The more often you interact with a single entity, the more they learn about you. Today Google and Amazon know you much better than your bank. Any unique insights that a bank may have is limited by their ability to take part in that transaction. Thus entities, with the ability to initiate transactions, have the most control (summary of Identity will Define Future of Trust Blog).

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