News & Insights

APRIL 2012 NAVIGATOR
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE
Co-Brand Cards: In It Together, the Top 25 Global Players
One of the most enduring and resilient credit card products is the travel co-brand.  And airline co-brands are widely recognized by issuers as highly attractive products due to their lower-risk, higher-spend customers, the strength of frequent flyer program marketing, and their widely understood value proposition....

IN THE NEWS
By Charles Marc Abbey
National Merchants Revisited


RESEARCH REPORTS
2011 Mobile Person-to-Person (P2P) Payments Study
The report provides unique insights into how leading providers of P2P services are leveraging mobile technology and capabilities to offer market-competitive mobile P2P offerings.
2011 U.S. Merchant Acquirer Pricing Survey
The 2011 Acquirer Pricing Study is a data intensive look at pricing rates and strategies for small merchants (<$10 million in annual volume) and provides unique insights into how banks are currently pricing small merchants.
2010 Mobile Banking and Payments Study
The report is the first data-intensive study of its kind and will provide unique insights into how banks currently leverage mobile as a new channel to reach consumers.
PAST ISSUES OF THE NAVIGATOR

 

MARCH 2012 Navigator


Universal Commerce: A Conversation with First Data’s Lead for Global Product Management and Innovation, Mark Herrington
Most recently we had the opportunity to speak with Mark Herrington, executive vice president of Global Product Management and Innovation, about First Data's Universal Commerce strategy. In this Q&A format, we cover topics...
A Quick Look at the Current State of the CFPB
The formation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2011 raised more questions than answers in terms of the Bureau’s scope of oversight, priorities, and leadership. Of course, there was a fair amount of controversy...
Comparison Websites for Merchant Processing: A Fragmented and Noisy, But Viable Market
As competition in U.S. acquiring continues to intensify and acquirers continue to focus on lead source management as a primary competitive dimension, the Internet is of increasing importance.  Comparison websites are...
Biller, Police Thyself: NACHA’s New Rule For Telephone-Initiated Recurring Payments
The National Automated Clearing House Association (“NACHA”) recently amended its Operating Rules to allow merchants and creditors (“Originators”) to obtain oral authorization from a consumer over the telephone for...
The Financial Impact of PCI Program Pricing in Merchant Acquiring
There are few things in the U.S. acquiring business about which one could say acquirers have a true consensus, but one of those tactical elements that has become essentially universal is the design and application of PCI...
KYC in the Mobile POS Market
First Annapolis recently conducted field research that included signing up for the Intuit GoPayment and North American Bancard (NAB) Pay Anywhere mobile POS offerings to see, among other reasons, how the boarding process...
Opportunities for Electronic Payments in Higher Education
Higher education institutions have made big strides in streamlining their procurement processes. Several large universities have implemented centralized purchasing, Procure-to-Pay processes, and IT systems for spend reporting....
Payments Industry Stock Price Tracker
Figure 1 is the March Payments Industry Stock Price Tracker. The chart measures current stock prices and market caps (as of March 28, 2012) and changes over the last 30 days as well as year-to-date movements.  The stock...

 

FEBRUARY 2012 Navigator

The Transformation of Traditional Agent Banking
To appreciate how agent banking has come full circle, you have to flashback to 1996 when most national and regional banks self-issued their own consumer credit cards. The industry had just experienced a decade long stretch...
Single Purpose Gift Cards in U.S. Acquiring
Our most recent research shows that single purpose gift card programs, in which an acquirer provides gift cards and related processing to its merchants, have become a highly ubiquitous product in U.S. acquiring with nearly...
A Revival of the Merchant Cash Advance Industry
A larger number of acquirers are offering Merchant Cash Advances (“MCA”) than in previous years.  In a recent study, First Annapolis found that 50% of acquirers are now offering MCA, up from 42% in 2007 and 43% in...
The Stalwart KPIs of Commercial Cards
Commercial charge card programs have been a strong and steady performer in recent years. With the exception of operating cost de-leveraging challenges triggered by 2009’s 5% contraction in commercial card spend, most commercial...
Q4 2011: U.S. Credit Card Issuer Performance Snapshot
If 2010 was the year for the credit card industry to begin its dig out from under the turmoil of the economic recession, 2011 has proved to be the year of marked improvement and stabilization for the industry. The decline...
Back in Black for U.S. Small Business Credit
The past five years have brought challenges to small business credit card issuers. As net charge-off rates for the industry peaked around 15% in mid-2009, many small business credit card programs were substantially underwater....
Consumer De-leveraging: Have We Seen the End?
Consumer credit surged in the final months of 2011 with the Federal Reserve reporting a November increase of $20.4 billion in total outstanding consumer credit, the largest monthly increase in a decade.  December followed...
Payments Industry Stock Price Tracker
Figure 1 is the February Payments Industry Stock Price Tracker. The chart measures current stock prices and market caps (as of February 27, 2012) and changes over the last 30 days as well as year-to-date movements. The stock...


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