An Update on Tempo Payments
Tempo announced a new decoupled debit strategy called Tempo Debit about two months ago. We recently asked Tempo Payments CEO Mike Grossman for an update on his company's activities since that announcement. Our Q&A exchange with him follows.
Q. How would you define 'success' for Tempo in the coming year?
A. We have three key objectives: 1) forging relationships with several large new issuers interested in decoupled debit; 2) enabling our initial decoupled debit issuer - HSBC - to successfully launch programs with major merchants; and 3) expanding our technology platform to include support for PIN credit and stored value.
Q. What's been the response by retail bankers to Tempo's decoupled debit platform strategy?
A. 85% of the nation's top 25 financial institutions are proactively analyzing the market implications of Capital One's recent announcement and these activities are regarded as highly strategic by senior management. Roughly 50% of the top 25 financial institutions are actively considering the introduction of a decoupled debit program. A significant percentage of financial institutions ranked 26-200 are also showing active interest. We have not yet made a meaningful outreach to smaller financial institutions.
Q. With several decoupled debit approaches on the market, what will Tempo do to differentiate itself
A. Tempo provides issuers with the only modular, end-to-end technology solution for decoupled debit. We will support any decoupled debit approach that issuers are interested in pursuing.
Q. Any reason to believe that the major networks will be allowing these programs to ride their networks, with or without an association brand ?
A. Yes. MasterCard has already enabled decoupled debit with both Capital One and PayPal. We believe that more issuers are on the way and that other networks will be compelled to follow based on issuer demand and increased competition.
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