American Express, sensitive to the fast-moving winds blowing change into the digital payments scene, is investing $100 million to ensure its role in the future.
American Express is joining the ranks of old-school credit card companies that have realized they need to embrace the future of digital transactions. Its new Serve platform enables novel digital payments that threaten PayPal and pave the way for NFC.
Visa has announced a new personal-payments system for U.S. card holders to send and receive funds. The system will greatly increase the scope of person-to-person digital payments globally, and represents new competition for scrappier (and more flexible?) contenders like Paypal.
The encrypted ROAM credit-card reader, and associated e-commerce apps, has just been announced for RIM's BlackBerry platform, globally. With so many million BlackBerrys out there, and RIM's rep for security, the rival Square device is in trouble.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey just flicked on the public spotlight over his new venture: Square. It's a tiny plastic blob that gives smartphones the ability to act as secure credit card readers. It's clever, disruptive, but will have to evolve very rapidly.
