Tag: American Express | Page 2

After Demonetization, India Seeking a New Normal

The payments news from India just keeps coming.

As the government continues its push toward a cashless society, its policies are getting mixed reviews. But companies continue to shore up their digital payment offerings, hoping to capitalize on the climate there.

Facebook Dives Deeper Into Payments Under David Marcus, Competing As A PF, Again

The only thing separating Facebook from being a true payment facilitator is it registering as one. The social media giant today announced users of its Messenger app can now send payments from within the app to make purchases from sites who interface with the app using bots.

Facebook is working with Stripe, Braintree and PayPal, but also appears to be directly enabling acceptance of Visa, Mastercard, and American Express to make this happen, and Messenger users can store their card info in Messenger for use at checkout. This can be combined with the ability of brands being able to buy ads that take clickers into Messenger where their card info is saved. David Marcus, Facebook’s vice president of messaging and a former payments executive, has raised the Messenger user base from 700 million monthly active users to 1 billion in a year.

Reading The SEC Filing Tea Leaves: What To Make Of New Visa/Square And Amex/Costco Details?

As a business reporter, nothing is more relaxing than sitting back with a pile of freshly-filed SEC documents and digging in. But two different filings this week—related to Visa/Square and Amex/Costco—may have raised a lot more questions than they answered.

Let’s set aside the numbers for the moment. Visa has a slice of Square and has had it for years, as the cardbrand has previously disclosed. There was never a need to disclose the exact size of Visa’s investment or the equity stake because Square was privately held at the time of the investment and it certainly wasn’t material to Visa. That forces the question: Why disclose the numbers now?

Global Wrap: In Australia, MC Exec Lashes Out At Apple/Amex Deal

This week’s global payments report has investments from Mexico, India and the U.K., an Australian cyber currency IPO delayed for the fifth time, a Canadian Amex small merchant initiative and a MasterCard exec lashing out at the Apple/Amex deal in Australia.

There’s more fallout from Apple’s decision to launch in Australia (and Canada, for that matter) only with American Express cards. This time, it’s from a MasterCard exec crying foul, arguing that regulators take a more lax regulatory position with Amex than with other card brands.
Eddie Grobler, division president of MasterCard Australasia, said “Apple Pay launching in Australia with Amex proprietary cards was a symptom of its ability to charge merchants much higher fees than Visa or MasterCard and therefore having much fatter margins to share with Apple, which has been demanding a cut of the fees paid to banks before allowing them onto Apple Pay.”