Frank Young – Contributor
What are banks talking about this week? How did Apple’s announcement impact them? While 15bps on 2% of eCom GDV is a nuisance, 15bps on 15% of eComm GDV is an earthquake.
eCom – Politics and Scenarios
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Category Archives: Networks/Schemes
ApplePay gets iOS Competition – Curve
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The Times (London) Article – May 29 2024
In January of this year, Apple offered commitments to the EU to assuage their concerns about NFC payments and mobile wallets related to the EU’s Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA—see blog). Apple’s approach follows Google’s model in Host Card Emulation (HCE—see Apple Developer Doc).
Visa Expands the Pipe
Flexible Credentials
© 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.
Background
Visa’s network is the largest commercial network in the world, moving over $15T in volume over 4.3B cards in over 200 countries. Visa’s core is called VisaNet, a real-time messaging network between banks. They don’t move money but send instructions to and from banks, merchants, consumers and other approved third parties. The banks move the money, primarily through net settlement on ACH. The beauty behind Visa’s network is its operating model, which allows thousands of partners to invest billions of dollars. To defeat Visa, you not only have to create a better network, but you must also create a better economic model for EVERYONE to switch, AND overcome the combined investment of all current stakeholders. This is why SEPA failed (see Power of Bank Networks).
A2A, Fed Now and “Instant” Payments – Threat to V/MA? Nope
Short Blog – Free Content
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My good friend Dave Birch wrote a piece in Forbes last week on Account to Account transfer threat to V/MA. I wanted to provide an alternate view. This will likely be a multi-part blog.. today I’m starting with the consumer and the merchant (from a US perspective).
No new information for my frequent readers, just pulling together some of the latest data (see PIX below).
Continue readingDOJ Probe – Network Tokenization – 2023
It’s hard to believe I’ve been writing about payment tokenization for 11 yrs. Tokenization is an overloaded term with multiple definitions. Last week McKinsey wrote a fantastic article on crypto tokenization, this note is about the tokenization of card numbers (PAN to DPAN) performed by network tokenization services like Visa Tokenization Service (VTS) and Mastercard Digital Enablement Service (MDES).
This week the US DOJ opened a probe into network tokenization services (Bloomberg). The specifics of the probe are not known
Short Blog – US Paze and RTP – Consumer Terms
New consumer terms rolled out at several banks this week. As the former head of online and payment services at Wachvoai (40%+ of Wells) I had managed these agreements. Changes are a very big deal, usually less than once per year. Given my history with Wachovia I chose to review the Wells Fargo below agreement (JPM, BAC, and COF all have similar).
https://www.wellsfargo.com/online-banking/online-access-agreement/
Continue readingPaze Update – 4 Elements of the PAZE Wallet (70% confidence)
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Over the last 5 yrs I’ve written 9 blogs on PAZE/SRC, and over 20 on the TCH’s 13 yr effort to own mobile payments. Today is my update and latest best guess at what they are building. This is a 70% confidence guess based upon my discussions with Merchants, Early Warning alumni, former bank execs, and previous releases (ex Authentify).
Continue readingSeparating Payment and Identity
15 pages (summary is 4)
Follow blog from Payment Authorization – Under the Hood (ie working on a car engine), Trust Assertions – Identity will Define the Future of Payments and Role of Identity and Trust in eCommerce.
Today’s blog is one of my personal favorites, not only because of the topic but because of the leading experts in retail, identity, networks, and payments that collaborated and provided editing (thanks all). While I’m no longer the tech expert, I do have a unique view on the “inside baseball” incentives and realities of what is actually happening (behind the rules). Payments are not like a brand-new Ferrari operating to spec, they are a very messy business with complex rules, worn-out systems, unresponsive drivers and a broke racing team with no sponsor. This is a get-your-hands-dirty blog. Note that I’m open to feedback in case I’ve missed something
Outline
- Summary
- Survey of global identity initiatives
- How identity works in eCommerce today
- Technical example
- How identity improves CX and eCommerce payment flows
- Four future scenarios of identity and payments
- What should investors track
Wallets, APIs and Trust
6 Page Blog
Top of mind today are Wallets, Identity and Application Program Interfaces (APIs). APIs are the core concept behind many new business models investors must decipher:
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
- Payments as a Service (PaaS)
- Banking as a Service (PaaS)
- Open Banking – PISP, AISP, ..etc
- Account Aggregation – FDX, Plaid, Akoya, … etc
- Payment Service Provider (PSP) – Stripe, Adyen, PYPL/Braintree, … etc
Previously, I’ve covered this topic in Open Banking and Open Payments and Trust Networks (2020) Part 3 – Internet 2.5 (2022), Modularity and Trust (2022) and Evolution of V/MA – Moving Beyond Cards (2021). Summary points from these previous blogs:
Continue readingVisa Launches Visa+ with PayPal as Anchor
Short Blog
https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.releaseId.19621.html
Today Visa announced a major expansion of Visa Direct called Visa +, with PayPal as the anchor launch partner. “help individuals move money quickly and securely between different person-to-person (P2P) digital payment apps” without requiring the recipient to have a Visa card.
Visa+ expands Visa’s role as the meta-directory of payments connecting consumers, wallets and accounts with a master “payname”. If I were to write the marketing one-liner for Visa+ it would be “pay people in the way they want to be paid”.
Continue reading