NEW YORK – In a post earlier this week on PYMNTS.com, Market Platform Dynamics CEO Karen Webster takes a look at payment processors as if they were fantasy teams competing for your pick, with her Fantasy Payments 2014 line-up. Here are a couple of the contenders and brief synopsis of Webster’s picks. To get all her fantasy match-ups and insights, read the article on PYMNTS.com.
Amazon Vs. Everyone: Amazon competes vigorously with just about every physical and online retailer and launched their mobile POS package a few weeks ago. Amazon is clearly all about using its scale and pricing power to gain even more of both, while making it really hard for anyone in the markets that it chooses to operate gain any of either.
Visa Checkout Vs. PayPal: PayPal is the granddaddy of digital accounts, amassing just shy of 200 million accounts worldwide and an impressive roster of retailers that accept PayPal as a checkout option. But progress has been slow and the barriers large for PayPal. Visa Checkout lets consumers buy online in a “one click” fashion, but the company needs both consumers and merchants to get on board.
MasterCard Vs. Cash: MasterCard has declared a war on cash. Yet, despite the company’s focus and broad enabling platform, the needle away from cash has moved very slowly, if at all.
Networks Vs. Merchants: For a very long time, payment networks forgot that they had more than one customer group to serve and that was the merchant. Networks got bigger, merchant discounts and interchange fees got bigger too, as payments volume increased and issuers offered rewards to get consumers loyal to their products. Merchants could, if they really wanted to, ditch cards and go back to cash or check, but don’t because that isn’t how consumers want to pay.
Cybercriminals Vs. EMV: We have learned two things since the Target breach. One is that EMV would have done absolutely zippo to prevent it. The second is that cybercriminals are among the most clever, productive, well-organized and dedicated people in the payments community.