PayPal announced that it will enable China UnionPay credit and debit card acceptance by European merchants, creating opportunities for European merchants to engage in cross-border ecommerce with cardholders of China's largest card network. Acceptance will be enabled though an enhancement to PayPal subsidiary Braintree's mobile commerce platform. The cross-border ecommerce market for Chinese consumers is projected at [...]
In a move that could pose serious competitive challenges to PayPal and other ecommerce payment players, Apple is expanding Apple Pay to support web-based ecommerce payments starting this fall. The product will initially work only through Apple's Safari browser. 21 major retailers including Office Depot, Target, Home Shopping Network and Overstock.com have already indicated they [...]
All over the United States these days, consumers are getting used to new smart chip credit cards. At one grocery store, you swipe your card like you always have before, and the cashier says, “No, you have to dip it.” A few days later, you walk into another grocery store, spot the chip reader, and [...]
Generally speaking, I'm one of those people that cringes when attention-seekers like Kim Kardashian actually get attention for their antics. But I just couldn't let this one go without comment. She filed litigation against Amazon, MasterCard and Lucova asserting that the use of facial recognition technology to authenticate payments is an infringement on her intellectual property [...]
Google recently announced a handsfree payment product which feels more like a publicity stunt than a serious attempt to disrupt the payments ecosystem. My top reasons that Google's offering won't be successful: It requires an exotic point of sale setup to authenticate users. Merchants are generally unwilling to invest dollars in upgrading the point of sale [...]
