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: Issuers
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).
DOJ 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
Paze 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 readingBack from Europe
Sorry for the long quiet period. My youngest just graduated High School and as a WWII history buff, his gift was the Band of Brothers tour from Normandy to Salzberg. We came away with a new appreciation for the cost of freedom and the sacrifices made all of those in the armed forces.
European Payment Insights
Covid had put a long pause on my travel to Europe. In the 6 countries we visited I was pleasantly surprised at the broad acceptance of contactless and tap to pay. Beyond tapping with my iPhone, most restaurants first attempted to tap cards before a “dip”. Contactless now comprises ~60% of POS transactions, a behavior 3-5 yrs more advanced than the US and certainly one of the drivers of card GDV growth in the EU. The V/MA position is Europe is perhaps stronger than in any other market, as any new scheme would also need to integrate seamlessly into this acceptance (and presentment) infrastructure.
Continue readingTap to Pay – Growing the Network – $700B GDV Opportunity
~$700B GDV opportunity for breakout volume growth as the network could “double” in scale as every cardholder could become a “merchant” in 20-30 min.
This month was a first! During my 25 yrs in payments, I could accept a card payment (in person) with no additional hardware. Enrolling as a Square merchant took only 30 min and I was then live with Apple Tap and Pay. A fantastic experience! (see Square). This is a tremendous “team effort” by Visa (VAS), Apple (See Mobeewave blog) and Square (as PayFac).
Continue readingSRC Focus – Airlines
Per my June blog BNPL – Travel Example, I laid out how Airlines were a logical focus for BNPL. It seems that Issuers are either reading my blog, or coming to the same conclusions as SRC is likely to launch first with Airlines.
Continue readingPart 2 – The Power of Bank Networks
The Bull Case for V/MA (24 pages).
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Part 1 – US Payments Environment covered the complexity of the US payment environment and the challenges faced by top banks in modernizing their systems (where all systems live forever). There are many types of payments: bill payments, A2A, P2P, wires.. Today the focus is on how banks intermediate commerce. Banks MUST have networks as every bank can’t connect to every consumer/merchant. Effective Bank networks (aka rails) are NOT a commodity service, but one that allows the banks to leverage their unique ability to assume risk.
Part 1 – US Payments Environment
Assessing the Environment and Setting the Focus (part 2 – Power of Bank Networks)
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Must read FT article “How JPMC’s plan to kill credit cards split the bank”. The article discusses Jamie Dimon’s internal mandate to drive a new payment network. I was shocked with the level of internal org quotes here. In my view, Jamie is the best bank CEOs in history (based on performance and talent coming out of JPMC). As a former banker, I know how hard it is to move the ship. However, FT is wrong. Chase’s efforts ARE NOT about killing credit cards, but rather creating something much bigger.
This is a long blog..
Continue readingApple – #1 Payment Innovator
As Apple is set to launch the iPhone 14 today, I was thinking about the significance of ApplePay’s innovations to V/MA and how these innovations benefit the entire network of merchants and consumers. Making payments easy is hard… Apple is the lead “innovator” within the V/MA networks at the consumer touchpoint (with Google, Samsung, PayPal and others in the mix). Their “wallet” and branded integration into both POS AND mCom is unrivaled and represents 93% of all mobile wallet payments in the US (2021).
This 2021 Pulse Network Debit Whitepaper provides the best public view on performance (US Only), with TPV CAGR over 50%. Quite frankly, when it comes to mobile payments, it’s silly to talk about anything else by ApplePay in the US