Busy Few Weeks in the Payments World
2014/10/16
It has been busy few weeks in the payments world. Not surprisingly, reaction to Apple Pay's announcement is the hottest topic in payments. It even manages to dominate European conferences with no specific agenda items dedicated to Apple. We at Celent added our own voice to the debate by publishing a new report on Apple's entry into payments, in which we describe Apple Pay and assess its prospects. Celent clients can download the report here, and all are welcome to join me at the webinar next Monday, October 20th. By then, Apple Pay should be up and running - the iOS upgrade which would launch Apple Pay is expected over the weekend. In the meantime, PayPal announced that it would separate from eBay and its core auction business, and would get a new CEO, Dan Schulman, a seasoned payments executive from American Express. Arguably, both companies will be able to better focus and compete as stand-alone businesses. However, it's difficult not to think that the separation also makes them both more "in play" in the industry consolidation. Immediately, rumours started swirling around who might buy/ merge with PayPal; some of the loudest noises concentrate around Square, although so far those rumours have been denied by Jack Dorsey via Twitter. Autumn is traditionally a conference season, and this year again, many of us are attending the leading events from Sibos and EFMA to Money2020, AFP, and BAI. My colleague Stephen and I were last week at Mobey Day in Barcelona, as usual an excellent event; many thanks to Mobey Forum for their cordial invitations! As a sign of its growing presence and influence, Mobey Day became two days this year. It focused on two major themes - Host Card Emulation (HCE) and biometrics. While the latter was brought to the forefront by Apple Pay, the former can certainly be an alternative strategy for banks looking to deploy NFC solutions for Android devices. Dan Latimore and I will soon be attending Money 2020, and are very much looking forward to spend a few days immersed in payments innovation and meeting our clients. Our diaries are filling up fast, but if you are going to be there and would like to meet, let us know or reach out to your Celent account manager. However, as much as we all get excited about innovation in payments, we can't afford to forget what makes it all work in the back office. We have been conducting extensive research this year into card management and transaction processing (CMTP) market and the vendors that serve that market. Our report offering "a dozen observations" on the market trends has been out for a couple of weeks now and I will be hosting a webinar on this topic next week on October 22nd - join us if you can.