Data Tipping Point.. Good things will happen

Recent issues with Facebook, Equifax, GDPR compliance, … have brought us to a tipping point in data. The basic structure of how data is: permissioned, shared, used, accumulated, analyzed, sold, regulated, … must change. Google and FB operate in a Big Data 1.0 architecture powered by the “virtuous cycle”. Edward Snowden showed us how the NSA also acts in this centralized model as a data vacuum (not so virtuously). Literature and entertainment have created broad awareness of the dangers of centralization and loss of privacy: 1984, the Borg, The Circle, Black Mirror, … etc.   Continue reading “Data Tipping Point.. Good things will happen”

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”

Banks as a Data Business – Example Amex Advance/Acxiom

Traditionally the core of bank margin is in risk management. The core of risk management is data.. thus Banks have been the among the best data businesses (as IBM knows). Banks “learn” about their customers through bank interaction: payroll, card transactions, lending. This has helped banks make better risk decisions (both credit and fraud/identity). Within the bank data cycle the traditional use of data is for an internal benefit: risk and cross sale of the bank’s products and services (not that of consumers or merchants).  However the “virtuous cycle of banking data” is very different from that enjoyed by Amazon and Google, both in the scale and type of data and consumer facing use.  Continue reading “Banks as a Data Business – Example Amex Advance/Acxiom”

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.

 

Equifax, Facebook and Dangers of Centralization [of Data]

Equifax. It’s hard to sit on sit my hands and not write on this one. My perspective is shaped through running 2 of the largest online banks in the world, developing state of the art fraud prevention systems with the top 20 banks, working with Google and today creating Commerce Signals.

Enron has new competition for the company name that denotes loss and fraud. Equifax may be the single largest breach of consumer information in history…. It is everything from social to DOBs, DL #s, …. How did Equifax get our data? Continue reading “Equifax, Facebook and Dangers of Centralization [of Data]”

Rewiring – Part 2: Walmart+Goog, Amazon+Whole Foods, …

I’m taking a rather abbreviated approach to blogging today.. as most of my key points have more detail in my other posts. I’ll just link to my old posts and focus on a few new thoughts. Continue reading “Rewiring – Part 2: Walmart+Goog, Amazon+Whole Foods, …”

Amazon 2% + PayPal Discover

Two HUGE payment events this week

Amazon 2%

Per Bloomberg, consumers that don’t want to go for the 5% back Amazon store card (SYF) can now link their DDA and earn 2% back.  This may be the biggest payment innovation of the year!  Continue reading “Amazon 2% + PayPal Discover”

Payments Data and Google Attribution

Great articles yesterday

This year, the iab (interactive advertising bureau) labeled 2017 as the Year of Measurement. Understanding why, and what is changing here is key for retail, banking and advertising. Most of us know the adage “measure what you want to manage”. As an engineer, I view measurement as the key feedback loop in any system or process. In order to gain feedback (close the loop), you must know what happened. Continue reading “Payments Data and Google Attribution”