Tag Archives: pricing

The Power to Price

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The best lever of economic margin for investors to track is power to price. In classical economics, pricing power is not merely a reflection of market share, but rather the capacity of an economic actor to minimize transaction costs while maintaining strategic control over data, risk, and user experience. Historically, eCommerce has operated under a macroeconomic paradigm where merchants absorb the operational and financial frictions of the conversion funnel, while payment networks and processors leverage their scale to price security, identity, VAS and settlement infrastructure.

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Federated Models Need Measurement

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A follow on blog to my Intent data post yesterday. Where intent is needed for authorization, measurement is needed by every “specialist” participating in an agentic interaction. As background I was founder/CEO of Commerce Signals, focused on measurement and card transaction data. Measurement is a powerful business. In fact, I would say Google started out as a measurement company with the PageRank algorithm. By keeping track of what users clicked on which link for which search word, they created the directory of the internet. Let’s dig a little deeper into why measurement is key in agentic, and for all federated models.

Google is not building a monolithic “central brain” to disintermediate the ecosystem. Instead, as discussed in my UCP Blog (also see Ask Macy’s Case Study), they are fostering a world of specialist collaborative models that interact across three specific technical layers:

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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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Open Baning is Dead in the US

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Last week, I shared the news that JPMorgan has started charging for API access, a move that many see as a death blow to pay-by-bank and open banking in the US. While this might sound dramatic, I believe it’s a necessary reset. The truth is, the current model was never sustainable, and with the CFPB’s recent move to vacate its unlawful 1033 rule, the writing is on the wall. Open banking as we know it is dead in the US.

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Pricing Agentic: Economic Models for a New Kind of Demand

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$4B market opportunity (18 mo), who will lead it?

Today’s blog covers possible pricing models and market structures for agentic transactions, a new type of demand (purchase order with a payment instrument). Retailers may despise the idea of a new aggregator, but they can’t say “no” to a PO by their customer. US retailers spend over $400B on marketing ($90B of which is digital marketing). There is no CAC for an agentic transaction.. While the daily innovations of AI and Agentic is fascinating, it is the economics and structures for pricing value that will influence participation, value creation and market success.

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