On Twitter:

We're hosting a payments meetup at @gumroad with talks by @airbnb and @square —come by! gumroad.com/meetup

— Sahil Lavingia (@shl) May 17, 2013

On the web:

• The future of Bitcoin: 3 predictions from experts - GigaOm - "Casares explained how some people in his country are using “old Android phones” to acquire and exchange Bitcoins at a time when the government is clamping down on the trade in U.S. dollars."
• Inside Mastercard’s Social Command Center - Digiday - "For Mastercard, diffusing social in the organization, ironically, meant centralizing it."
• High-Profile VCs Caught up in Bitcoin Mania - PEhub - "As big as the bitcoin opportunity is, it is equally rife with risk."
• Black-hat bitcoin’s days are numbered - Quartz - "Bitcoin has a lot of problems as a currency—its tendency for spasms of crazy volatility, most notably—but fewer as a payments system."
• Bitcoin’s consumerization continues with Perk, a rewards platform and Web browser for normal people - PandoDaily - "Now the only problem is figuring out how to get bitcoin into the hands of the masses."
• Google in Payments: Why Yesterday was BIG News - FinVentures (Tom Noyes) - "Osama and the Google team have done great work getting this out to market. Congrats."
• T-Mobile’s Twitter Account Explains Why Carrier Won’t Support Google Wallet - TmoNews - “We’re supporting ISIS, the wireless payment standard for mobile devices.”
• Square launches faster card swipe machine - Taking Charge - "Sure, we could make payments work better, but why should we when everyone really seems to like plastic?"
• Moving Upstream, PayPal and Square Make a Play for the Local Merchant’s POS - Street Fight - "The gist of PayPal’s and Square’s long-term aspirations is fairly clear: create a two-sided network with a consumer-facing mobile wallet on one end and a merchant processing network on the other, creating a system that gives them control over the entire payment stack."

On the wires:

• International Payment Networks Facing Emerging Threat from Domestic Competition and m-POS - "…the real threat comes when the successful m-POS solution providers follow the PayPal model and enable their own digital wallets and P2P transactions which could completely cut the international networks out of the equation.”
• What is the Killer App for Mobile NFC? It May Not Be Payments, Executives Agree at the 2013 NFC Solutions Summit - "When asked the question "Is NFC dead?" compared to alternate technologies such as cloud payments, Glenbrook Partners Consultant Allen Weinberg stressed that all these technologies are still in the early days and it is too soon to make judgments on what mobile commerce technologies will be the winners and losers. "At the end of the day, we don't have a widespread, commercialized anything yet," he said."
• sweetgreen rewards App an Immediate Success - "Representing the first white-label app from LevelUp, sweetgreen rewards has been an immediate success, allowing guests to earn dollars that can be redeemed at any of sweetgreen's 17 locations and offers various perks that can be unlocked over time…"

A couple of interesting announcements were made today in the world of point-of-sale and next generation "cash registers":

• PayPal introduced a new "Cash for Registers" program - including offering "free credit, debit card, check, and of course PayPal processing for the remainder of the year to any qualifying U.S business turning in their dusty old cash register in exchange for a modern solution like PayPal Here (iPad, card reader, iPad stand, cash drawer, and printer)."

  See PayPal's David Marcus' blog post about the new program.

  Here's a TechCrunch story on the program.

• Square has announced Square Stand, calling it "beautiful new hardware for brick and mortar businesses that turns an iPad into a complete point of sale." Square Stand includes an integrated card reader that keeps information secure from swipe to payment, and easily connects to the hardware accessories businesses need, including a receipt printer, kitchen printer, cash drawer, and barcode scanner.

  Here's a TechCrunch story on Square Stand.

  Also, see this Fortune interview with Square CEO Jack Dorsey and Jesse Dorogusker, a former Apple exec who led the development of Stand: "A bamboo stand can be very beautiful and there's a lot of great craftwork out there, but it doesn't have the intelligence of this system."

• GroupOn also introduced "Breadcrumb POS, a free, easy to use, and reliable iPad point of sale that will blow your cash register away. It offers the functionality that cafés, health and beauty businesses and shop owners need." The company also said that "as of today we’re throwing in free processing on the first $5,000 in credit card transactions."

On the web:

• California Sues JPMorgan Chase Over Credit Card Cases - NY Times - "JPMorgan Chase … deluged the courts with dubious lawsuits to collect soured credit-card debt."
• How hackers allegedly stole “unlimited” amounts of cash from banks in just hours - ArsTechnica - "Prosecutors didn't identify the payment processors except to say one was in India and the other in the United States."
• PayPal exec aims to “obliterate passwords from the face of the planet” - ArsTechnica - "Our intention is to really obliterate, within a certain number of years, both passwords and PINs..."
• One good reason to accept Bitcoins: It screws credit card companies - Pando Daily - "Merchants should enjoy it while it lasts."
• Mobile Gift Card App Gyft Partners With BitPay To Start Accepting Bitcoin Payments In Its Android App - TechCrunch - "Bitcoin is hard to use today, and that’s a good thing. There are still bugs and it is too risky for the average consumer."
• WePay Debuts Veda, An Intelligent Risk Engine That Leverages Social Media Data To Prevent Merchant Fraud - TechCrunch - "A traditional credit score only shows a sliver of who you are, but an online profile allows us to assign our users a more accurate ‘WePay credit score’ based on their personal history of verified, social data."
• No big bang for mobile payments - Business Spectator - "Key to this is understanding that mobile payments are not a vertical market. Players must understand how the different participants in a payment system – the merchant, issuer, and consumer – can all benefit through mobile."
• Adam Smith, Paul Krugman and Bitcoin - Tomorrow's Transactions Blog - "There won't be a single world currency (whether the Dollar or the Remibi) and there won't be a single virtual currency (whether Bitcoin or MintChip). There will be lots of currencies and we will all be better off because of it."
• Free banking at risk as EU wants us to bank anywhere in Europe - Telegraph - "European proposals that would allow Britons to switch to a bank account in another country could hasten the demise of free banking, experts have warned."
• Mobile Payments Service Wins Bill and Melinda Gates Innovator Award - eCommerce Bytes - "Boleto is a unique barcode payment ticket that contains the customer's unique purchase data and Trak's bank information."

On the wires:

• Eight Members Of New York Cell Of Cybercrime Organization Indicted In $45 Million Cybercrime Campaign - "A four-count federal indictment was unsealed in Brooklyn charging eight defendants with participating in two worldwide cyberattacks that inflicted $45 million in losses on the global financial system in a matter of hours."
• Value-Based Payment Models Expected to Reach Tipping Point by 2018 - "Transitioning to payment models that base compensation on outcomes requires physicians and health plans to exchange new kinds of information – different than what is required under today’s predominant fee-for-service arrangements."
• Retailers, Listen Up: High Rates of Mobile Shopping Cart Abandonment Tied to Poor User Experience - "While the majority of smartphone and tablet owners (68%) have attempted to make a purchase on their device, two-thirds (66%) failed to complete a transaction due to obstacles encountered during checkout."
• First Data Releases April 2013 SpendTrend® Analysis - "Year-over-year dollar volume growth increased 5.1% in April, a slowdown from March’s 6.0% growth."

On the web:

• India: Oxigen ties up with NPCI to unveil instant remittance service OxiCash for unbanked people - TechCircle.in - "OxiCash is a mobile wallet service through which people can make money transfers to any bank and also receive funds using the IMPS (Immediate Payment Service) platform of the NPCI…"
• Google Wallet chief leaves the company - VentureBeat - "Osama Bedier, the head of Google Wallet is out, according to several sources."
• Gay Bankers, Once Silent, Speak of Progress — and Hurdles - American Banker - "No one should be afraid to come to work every day as who they are, and no one should have to check who they are at the door…"
• PayPal’s John Lunn reveals how online retailers are using consumer data to beat high street stores - The Next Web - "…find out which startups are helping online retailers to maintain this market dominance, and what physical retailers should do next to fight back."
• Why mobile wallets alone will fail - Cyriac Roeding (shopkick CEO) - "The problem with mobile payments is that payment isn't a problem in the shopping world."
• Off The Schneid - AVC - "I've led a new venture investment for USV, which closed a few weeks ago and was announced last night. The company is Coinbase and my blog post announcing the investment is on the USV blog."
• Purchase, Deposit, and Bank from a Smartphone with Paidpiper - Programmable Web - "Paidpiper represents a new player to the field with a slightly different value proposition over some of its competitors."
• CardFlight Partners With Stripe And Launches SDK To Become The ‘Stripe Of Real-World Payments’ - TechCrunch - "Enter CardFlight, which is launching with an encrypted, Square-like card reader of its own, as well as an SDK and APIs that will allow developers to create apps and take “card-present” payments on their mobile apps."
• EMV Takes Center Stage on Day Two of THE Tech EVENT - Convenience Store News - "Several speakers stressed in today’s standing-room-only session that EMV is a set of guidelines, not standards."
• Prepaid Cards for Jobless Benefits - The Members Group - "…42 states in the U.S. now direct deposit monthly unemployment benefits to out-of-work consumers on reloadable prepaid cards…"
• Discover Card's Email Balance Alert is a Thing of Beauty - NetBanker - "The message is nicely laid out with plenty of white space and it's chock full of links to get more information."

On the wires:

• MasterCard to Power Nigerian Identity Card Program - "This program is the largest roll-out of a formal electronic payment solution in the country and the broadest financial inclusion initiative of its kind on the African continent."
• Wells Fargo Adds Bankers, Launches New Secured Credit Products to Help More Small Businesses - "Wells Fargo’s new Business Secured Credit Card also helps new businesses establish and rebuild business credit…"
• Tabbedout and Future POS Expand Partnership to Bring Unrivaled Merchant Marketing Solution to All Future Fusion Merchants - "This new partnership means that the Tabbedout merchant marketing solution, Periscope, is now available in the 4,000+ Future POS merchant locations that use the Future Fusion software in their restaurants, bars, and hotels…"
• Elavon Names Simon Haslam President and Chief Executive Officer - "Simon’s experience and passion for growth and innovation make him the best individual to lead Elavon as we continue to extend our global reach and the value we deliver to our customers."
• Barclays Uses Nuance Voice Biometrics to Identify Customers by the Sound of their Voice - "No longer will customers need to answer intrusive security questions in order to verify their identity. By simply speaking with an agent, a customer’s voice is verified using Nuance voice biometrics technology, making the authentication process quick, secure and transparent."

PayPal has introduced Log In with PayPal - the latest version of what was formerly known as PayPal Access.

According to the company, "Log In with PayPal, provides everything consumers and merchants need to create an account and complete a purchase - including user identification, shipping information, payment details and checkout." This new version has been tailored for mobile devices and fully integrates PayPal's checkout experience for the first time.

Discover has announced that it has signed contracts with 50 merchant acquirers to help extend PayPal’s in-store acceptance to more than 2 million merchant outlets by the end of 2013. The relationship between PayPal and Discover to expand PayPal's acceptance was announced last August.

“With the signing of 50 merchant acquirers to date, we are well on our way toward helping PayPal reach its goals of acceptance at millions of physical locations in the U.S.,” said Diane Offereins, president of payment services at Discover.

“Our relationship represents the unique abilities we have to leverage our payments assets and infrastructure to work with emerging payments leaders like PayPal, and we’re proud of the progress we’ve made in such a short time.”

On the web:

• Trustev Tackles E-Commerce Identity Fraud With An Online Fingerprint Made From Social Signals And More - TechCrunch - "Trustev … has developed a product to tackle online fraud using an algorithmic system of social signals, behavioral data and transaction history…"
• PayPal expands further into stores, but Wal-Mart holds out - Reuters - "PayPal's expansion into brick-and-mortar stores gives the company access to a market that is roughly ten times the size of the online payments sector..."
• Payments Network Dwolla Raises $16.5 Million Series C From Andreessen Horowitz & Others, Expands To San Francisco- TechCrunch - "The legacy payments networks in existence today are bogged down with outdated technology, slowing progress…"
• Payment Services Firm Qiwi Eyes $100 Million In IPO - Investors.com - "Qiwi is a leading provider of next-generation payment services in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States."
• RetailNext Raises $15 Million More to Track Your Every In-Store Move - PE Hub - "Our focus is on taking analytics happening online and providing it to physical retailers."
• It's Time for Better Online Authentication Solutions - Portals and Rails (FRB Atlanta) - "Improving authentication techniques and requiring their use are critical to better mitigate online account takeover risks."
• The Elephant in the Payments Room - American Banker - Jon Matonis - "Disruption in the unit of account is the way to disrupt the payments space."
• 4G will boost mobile payment uptake, says MasterCard - V3 - "The rise in 4G networks will help usher in a new wave of innovative mobile payment services for businesses to offer customers…"
• Chase Visa deal and SDWOANAF: where potential and confusion meet - Mobile Payments Today

On the wires:

• The UnionPay Travel Prepaid Card Launched by The Bancorp - "Though the card is targeted to those planning to travel to Asia, the card will be accepted within the US wherever UnionPay cards are accepted."
• ROAM Releases RP350x: World’s First PCI-PTS certified Chip and Signature Mobile Card Reader - "The reader provides a low cost solution for enabling Chip and Sign payment acceptance…"
• VeriFone Enables Channel Partner Success with New EMV-Capable, Portable and Mobile Payment Solutions - "VeriFone is committed to enabling channel partner success in a rapidly evolving market by providing EMV-capable, portable and mobile solutions…"
• TriSource Solutions Introduces First End-to-End Merchant Aggregation Processing Solution During ETA - "The increased functionality of our merchant acquiring platform can get PSPs and PFs up and running in record time…"
• Leaf Announces a Better Way to Sell Merchant Credit Card Processing - "Leaf’s open approach to payments offers a seamless reseller option for our partners to empower their sales teams with a new, competitive solution…"

On the web:

• Nate Silver: What Big Data can't predict - Fortune - "It's important to know, too, that there's a difference between how good we are relative to our potential and how intrinsically predictable something might be."
• Two-factor or not two-factor? That is the security question - InfoWorld - "The case for two-factor authentication would appear to be a slam dunk. But not all security experts praise the solution as a remedy for all security ills."
• PayPal President Makes Surprise Commentary About Bitcoin: “We’re kinda thinking about it” - Silicon Angle - "It’s too far out to speculate on how PayPal would enable this, but if they did it could bring about an accessibility revolution overnight."
• PayPal Sees $20 Billion in Mobile Transactions - Bloomberg video interview with PayPal's David Marcus
• Visa and Fandango Mobilize Buying Movie Tickets - AdWeek - "If consumers opt in for the GPS-enabled Tixpress, they'll see a virtual marquee with movies that are showing nearby. With a couple of taps, they can view showtimes and purchase tickets if they've synced up Fandango app with their Visa account."
• Banks Should Act More Like Apple: Cap One's Innovation Chief - Bank Technology News - "The bank is additionally trying to learn lessons from other industries. It's been looking at, of all categories of companies, newspapers for inspiration..."
• Bitcoin takes an important step toward becoming part of every web browser on the planet - "Bitcoin just took an important step closer to becoming the universal, open, distributed payments glue that binds the world of digital money, anonymous transactions, and extra-governmental currencies together."
• Why banks FAIL at partnerships in mobile finance - "In summary, a bank now has to partner to deliver mobile finance. That means that the bank that used to do everything itself is now just part of a mixed value chain of solution providers covering hardware manufacturers, network operators, payments processors, information service providers and more."
• Smartphones Finally Surpass the Feature Phone - NY Times Bits Blog - "Manufacturers shipped 418.6 million cellphones, 216.2 million of which were smartphones, says IDC."

On the wires:

• Coming Soon!

On the web:

• PayPal Hits The Mall: eBay's Baby Takes On Google, AmEx And Apple At Cash Registers - Forbes (Clare O'Connor) - "The aim is for shoppers to be able to use PayPal at the cash register in two million stores by the end of 2013."
• Banks Urged to Put Limits on Payday-Style Loans - NY Times Dealbook - "Federal regulators on Thursday admonished some of the nation’s largest banks for offering payday-style loans, short-term costly credit tied to customers’ checking accounts."
• Google Think Insights: The Customer Journey to Online Purchase - "This tool helps you explore and understand the customer journey to improve your marketing programs."
• CGAP: Exploring Alternative API Product Concepts - "CGAP’s work in Applied Product Innovation (API) aims to understand how customer-centric design methodologies … could be tailored to branchless banking in order to achieve better financial service offerings for the poor."
• Medagate's health card combines incentives with functionality - Drug Store News - "...enables employers and health plans to combine a member/employee healthcare funding purse with a restricted-spend purse for targeted items and incentives…"
• Bank Customers Want A Seamless Experience (My Foot) - Snarketing 2.0 - "Consumers want things to work. Period."
• Banks use mobile phone history to determine credit rating - Springwise - "Cignifi’s new platform offers what it claims is the first to deliver credit and marketing scores for consumers without credit histories using mobile phone behavior data."
• Online Shopping, With Sales Tax Added - NY Times Bucks Blog - "Shoppers will now have to figure in sales tax when they are deciding whether it is better to buy a particular item online or in a brick-and-mortar store."
• The Mysterious World of Bitcoin: Does It Have Staying Power? - Knowledge @ Wharton - "Bitcoin has all the hallmarks of a classic speculative bubble..."
• Are QR codes losing their magnetism? - Mobile Marketer Daily - "Brands don't want to place a generic black and white box all over their creative…"
• Infographic: Mobile Devices Overtake Daily Life - "On average, people check their phones 150 times a day or every 6.5 minutes…"

On the wires:

• GateCrafters Now Offers Bill Me Later Payment Option - "We hope this option will give customers more peace of mind when purchasing big ticket items."
• Co-Op to Offer Enhanced Member Control of Cards Via New Mobile Card and Alert Product - "…the product to be offered by CO-OP will provide a range of services, including allowing members to set controls and alerts based on their preferences, such as transaction type, merchant, location and thresholds."
• Blackhawk Announces First Quarter 2013 Financial Results Consistent With Estimates Provided in Prospectus - "Demand for our prepaid products was strong during the first quarter as load value reached $1.6 billion, up 23% year-over-year..."
• Merchant Warehouse and LevelUp Announce $1 Million Development Fund - "LevelUp and Merchant Warehouse want to give more merchants the opportunity to extend the reach of their brand and tap into a wealth of customer data to help them grow their businesses."
• Accenture Survey Identifies Actions to Increase Consumer Adoption of Mobile Payments - "For mobile payments to achieve widespread adoption, consumers must be educated about the fact that mobile payments are secure and more convenient than other payment options."
• TSYS Merchant Solutions to launch TSYS Multi-Currency Solutions - "Pay in Your Currency, gives eligible international customers the choice of paying in their home currency at the point of sale, offering significant benefits to TSYS merchants and their customers."
• WorldPay, VeriFone Expand Efforts to Bring NFC/EMV-Ready Payment to Merchants - "VeriFone and WorldPay collaborate in crucial areas to deliver the right payment solutions to merchants…"

In a blog post this morning, PayPal's Don Kingsborough, VP of Retail Servicess, announced the expansion of PayPal's participation payments made at physical point of sale merchant locations.

Today, we are pleased to share the news that through our collaboration with Discover, we have expanded our presence from 20,000 locations in the U.S. to more than a quarter of a million. By the end of 2013 we expect to be in more than 2 million locations.

The FIDO Alliance today announced several new members - including Google, NXP and CrucialTec as board members, Entersekt and Fingerprint Cards as founding sponsors, and Allweb Technologies, Check2Protect, Crocus Technology, Diamond Fortress Technologies, and Insyndia Global as associate members.

The FIDO Alliance is an industry consortium focused on introducing "the first standards-based open specifications for overcoming password dependency with universal strong authentication."

"We are very pleased to count these outstanding global leaders among the ranks of the FIDO Alliance," said Michael Barrett, FIDO Alliance president and PayPal Chief Information Security Officer (CISO).

"FIDO is compelling to those who can lead and affect change, because the open FIDO specifications promise to restore trust with stronger security that also simplifies the user experience and ensures privacy. By overcoming the limits of proprietary authentication methods, FIDO opens up a vast marketplace for strong authentication where FIDO enabled devices and services interoperate. We encourage all who require secure user authentication, and those who provide various methodologies to join us on a very fast track to FIDO universal strong authentication."

Here's this week's chart of the week - PayPal's payment volume ($ Billions) by quarter from 2001 through its first quarter 2013 results reported earlier this week. The last two columns show a bit of seasonality - but, otherwise, a pretty impressive ramp "up and to the right"!

Share your thoughts about PayPal's growth - and future growth prospects - by adding a comment below.

Have you seen an interesting chart recently that opened your eyes to new insights? Please tell me about it! Email it to me: editor@paymentsnews.com

PayPal's parent eBay has announced financial results for 1Q2013.

The company's PayPal business delivered strong first quarter performance with revenue increasing 18% to $1.5 billion. PayPal gained 5 million active registered accounts in the period and ended the quarter with 128 million, a 16% increase.

PayPal's net total payment volume (TPV) grew 21% to $41 billion, driven by consumer and merchant use of PayPal both on and off eBay. PayPal continues to invest in growing its addressable market, product development, customer engagement and consumer awareness.

The company's mobile payment solution for small business, PayPal Here, became available for sale at more than 2,700 SoftBank locations across Japan and the iPad version of the product was launched in the U.S. PayPal also announced the chip and PIN version of PayPal Here in the U.K. which it plans to roll out this summer.

PayPal's offline initiatives are now live in almost 20,000 major retail locations in the U.S.

eBay reports that the PayPal 'take rate" was 3.77% in 1Q2013, up from 3.72% in the prior quarter and but down from the 3.87% reported a year earlier. Transaction expenses were 1.05%, up slightly from 1.03% in the prior quarter. The loss rate was 0.29%, up 1 basis point from the prior quarter.

On the web:

• Walmart Joins NRF, Ends Longest-Running Retail Feud Ever - StorefrontBacktalk - "According to one person familiar with the players involved, what changed is the nature of some of the legislation that Walmart is now pushing, such as interchange and tax considerations for E-Commerce."
• The case for digital tender - FT Alphaville - "…Central banks should issue their own e-money instead of leaving it in the hands of private companies."
• Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin Architect: Meet The Man Bringing You Bitcoin (And Getting Paid In It) - Huffington Post - "The mission is really to create a stable worldwide currency for the internet."
• Yay, hiss! Cards' mag stripe 'fingerprint' may foil thieves - Taking Charge Blog - "It turns out there's a similar lo-fi static attached to your credit card's magnetic stripe that, much like my vinyl mixtape, has long gone unheard and unappreciated."
• Champ at the Bitcoin (Comic) - AllThingsD
• Prepaid Debit Cards More Popular, Despite Fees - NY Times Bucks Blog - "One of the more frustrating fees on the cards is a charge for calling customer service."
• Bitcoin Isn’t the Only Cryptocurrency in Town - Technology Review - "Several others are also surging in popularity and value, and they claim to offer technical improvements that make them better suited to mainstream use."
• Eat Out Kenya Launches Partnership with KopoKopo, Safaricom - Yummy - "MPESA should be an option that every restaurant offers, especially when KopoKopo have streamlined the management and reporting process."
• The business case for EMV in the USA, yet again - Consult Hyperion's Tomorrow's Transactions Blog - "…I might go a little further and say that if cross-sector authentication solutions are developed reasonably quickly, then the issuers might be much better off shifting to the "something present" (SP) model sooner rather than later…"
• PayPal Extends Seller Protection Provision Off eBay - EcommerceBytes.com - "It appears not all sellers are covered for off-eBay protections yet, as PayPal rolls out coverage through the year, so look for a letter in your email inbox."
• Miura: we’ll ship 500,000 chip & PIN readers this year - Mobile Money Revolution

On the wires:

• Steve Elefant: A Pioneer in Payments, Point of Sale and Electronic Commerce Joins GoPago to Lead Strategy - "I have looked at all of the solutions and without a doubt, GoPago has the most robust cloud-based commerce, point-of-sale and mobile ordering platform on the market today."
• WorldPay and Intershop partner to deliver eCommerce solution with extensive payment processing and risk functionality - "The integration will provide retail merchants with a complete eCommerce solution with extensive payment processing, global customer reach and risk functionality."
• Mercury Leader Joins ETA Mobile Payments Committee - "In this role, Nayfack will develop best practices in mobile commerce with industry peers to enable merchants and consumers to navigate technological “ease-of-use.”

On the web:

• LG adds PayPal to its web-connected TVs - Internet Retailer - "PayPal significantly reduces the number of steps the user has to take in order to complete a transaction…"
• Mining digital gold - The Economist - "Even if it crashes, Bitcoin may make a dent in the financial world…"
• Analysts See Steady Credit-Card Use, Despite Fears of Consumer Cutbacks - Wall St. Journal - "...shoppers continued to swipe their credit cards at a healthy clip in the most recent quarter."
• eBay’s Paypal Acquires IronPearl To Fuel Growth Beyond 123M Users - TechCrunch - "There are only very few, world-reknowned growth hackers in the world and Stan (Chudnovsky) is one of them."
• The promise of Ripple - Reuters (Felix Salmon) - "I’ve been playing around a bit with Ripple, and I think it’s extremely promising."
• Now Backed By Andreessen & More, OpenCoin Looks To Build A Better Bitcoin — And A Universal Payment Ecosystem - TechCrunch - "Headed by financial services veterans like CEO Chris Larsen, who is also the founder of P2P lending giant Prosper, OpenCoin is on a mission to create a new kind of global currency."
• As Big Investors Emerge, Bitcoin Gets Ready for its Close-Up - NY Times - “To say highly speculative would be the understatement of the century.”
• PayPal / Discover Partnership to Launch April 19th - Reuters - "The deal means that, by the end of this year, PayPal will be accepted as a payment option in roughly 2 million retail stores that already take Discover credit cards."
• How advanced analytics are redefining banking - McKinsey - "Every single major decision to drive revenue, to control costs, or to mitigate risks can be infused with data and analytics…"
• Vodafone eyes M-Pesa launch in SE Asia - FT.com - "The company expects a potentially big market for M-Pesa in Myanmar…"
• E-cash in the attic - Consult Hyperion's Dave Birch: "The real point that I want to make, though, is that all of the factors that made Mondex inconvenient have vanished in a world with mobile phones, perhaps there is a kid in basement somewhere right now cooking up a bastard son of Mondex and Bitcoin and the e-cash revolution is, after all, just around the corner."
• Analysis: PayPal hopes to break shoppers' swipe habit in stores - Reuters - "There's no silver bullet for switching people from credit cards to PayPal. It will just take some time."
• The Bitcoin Crash Continues - Business Insider
• China UnionPay and Intel join forces for secure mobile payment - Engadget
• New Rwanda Diaries Ask, “Can We Build A Better Goat?” - CGAP
• Does mobile POS increase data security risks? - Mobile Commerce Daily
• Happy Birthday iPad - Asymco
• Facebook Will Peer Into Your Grocery Bag to Sell an Ad - Wired.com - "The system allows Facebook advertisers to target groups of users based on loyalty card usage at grocery stores and elsewhere, based on public records like auto registration, and based on email addresses consumers give out at retail checkout registers."
• Swipely Expands Its Credit Card-Based Loyalty System With Reputation Monitoring And Campaign Tracking - TechCrunch - "Since Swipely uses credit card data, it can not only show whether a campaign brought in new or returning customers, but also how much those customers spent on average."
• Banks' mobile apps fall short of the grade - Financial Services Club Blog

On the wires:

• Women’s Network in Electronic Transactions Announces Schedule for Annual Educational Event
• More Than Half of Surveyed Mobile Users Manage Personal Finances on Their Connected Devices, According to Research from IAB, InMobi & Viggle
• New Oxford Economics Study Confirms Negative Impact of Increased Bank Capital Levels on U.S. Economic and Job Growth - The Clearing House Association
• Centennial Bank Strengthens Its Merchant Relationships with Flexible, Efficient and Profit-driving Merchant Services from FIS
• Leaf Transforms Quick Serve Point of Sale Terminals Into Point of Smart Interactions

On the web:

• Lawyers To Interchange Judge: Tell Our Clients To Shut Up - Storefront Backtalk
• PayPal Provides “In-Aisle Selling” and “Order Ahead” Capabilities for Magento Community - PayPal Blog
• Bitcoin Is Already Making A Big Comeback - Business Insider
• Helixion launches NFC payments platform - NFC World
• Mobile Payments In Austin - BP3 Blog
• Apple Passbook users are among Sephora’s best customers - Internet Retailer
• Could Apple Give Mobile Payments a Shakeup? - Connected World

On the wires:

• Zipmark Partners with Rearden Commerce to Facilitate Payments for Deem™ Merchants
• Fiserv Launches Solution to Help Government Agencies Reduce Improper Payments
• New Mobile Payment Patent Expands PayOne Portfolio for Frictionless Secure Mobile Payments Online and in Stores

eBay recently held an analyst day briefing to provide guidance on its various lines of business. The company announced that across its core Marketplaces, PayPal, and GSI Commerce businesses, it expects to enable $300 billion in global commerce in 2015. PayPal specific highlights include:

• 25% of PayPal users were active on mobile in 2012, 10% of TPV came from mobile in 2012, 1M new users signed up through mobile in Q1 2013.
• $145 billion total purchase volume in 2012 is expected to double to $290 billion in 2015.
• Revenue anticipated to be somewhere between $9.5 billion to $10.5 billion by 2015, representing a 22% compound annual growth rate at the midpoint.

Analyst day webcast replay is available here; presentation slides are downloadable from here. PayPal section starts on slide 232.

Over on Payments Views, Glenbrook's Russ Jones blogs about the how the card industry is starting to subdivide at the point of sale into two submarkets, one being the “smart” transaction market and the other being the “basic” transaction market. He explores how this trend is exemplified through solutions from Google, Isis, PayPal, and Visa. The full article is here.

On the web:

• PayPal Buys Mobile App Developer Duff Research - Reuters
• FTC Issues Report On Mobile Payment Security, Privacy - MobilePaymentsToday.com
• First Financial, US Bank Launch First Photo Billpay Services - NetBanker
• eBay Opens Door into Russia with PayPal License - eCommerce Bytes

On the wires:

• WorldPay Acquires Card Payments Service Provider YESpay
• Western Union to Enable Government Payments in Haiti
• NCSOFT Adopts BilltoMobile for High-Conversion Mobile Payments
• NutraClick selects ReD Shield payment fraud prevention service
• Simplee's New Payments & Loyalty Platform Sets the Standard in Patient Billing

On the web:

• Payments Company Stripe Makes First Acquisition, Buys Kickoff - TechCrunch
• PayPal Launches Next Generation Developer Tools Mobile Payments - PayPal Blog
• Payments Startups Take The Data, Design And Development Route To Reengineer The Credit-Card Business - TechCrunch
• Retailer Sues Visa Over $13 Million 'Fine' for Being Hacked - Wired.com
• The ATM: Disappearing Soon from a Location near You? - Portals and Rails

On the wires:

• Elavon Launches Mobile Innovation Center
• Western Union Continues Mobile App Expansion
• Early Warning Advances Mobile Banking by Reducing the Threat of Duplicate Deposit Fraud
• Discover Announces International Alliance with Nigeria’s Interswitch Limited
• Fiserv Multiplies Consumer Mobile Payment Options by Combining P2P Payments and Mobile Banking
• FirsTech Accelerates Electronic Payments Growth With the Fusion Bill Pay Platform
• Earthport Signs American Express for its Cross-Border Payments Service
• Net Element International to Acquire Unified Payments

On the web:

• Product Crack: American Express Launches ezeClick in India - Livemint
• PayOne sues Home Depot for PayPal In-Store Checkout - Silicon Valley Business Journal
• Bitcoin Processor Links Web Shopping Carts To Amazon.Com's Shipping - Network World
• Isis Revamps Its Mobile Wallet And It’s Actually Fixing What’s Broken - StorfrontBacktalk
• Why The Swipe Fee "Settlement" Is Far From Settled - Retail's BIG Blog
• GroupMe’s Mobile Apps Now Let Users Split Payments - TechCrunch

On the wires:

• CyberSource 2013 UK eCommerce Report Out Now
• Fiserv Makes it Easy for Small Businesses to Enroll for SpotPay and Accept Cards and Checks

On the web:

• PayPal Here Expands to Japan - The PayPal Blog
• Fair and Square: Jack Dorsey Interview - STORES.org

On the wires:

• AirTran Credit Card Portfolio Transitions to Chase
• CashStar Is First To Bring Gifting To The Tablet
• Elavon Establishes Global Professional Services Business
• iovation Launches TrustScore to Help Online Companies Identify Good Customers
• Interac Debit Card Fraud Skimming Losses Plummet To Lowest Level On Record
• SecureNet’s PayOS Advances Payment Solutions for Merchants and Integration for Developers

On the web:

• Who Am I? Authentication Challenges - Portals and Rails

On the wires:

• BitPay Expands Seed Round with VC Investors
• First American Payment Systems to Enable PayPal In-Store Checkout
• BillMyParents Changes Name to The SpendSmart Payments Company
• Bluefin Introduces PayConex Payment Gateway, CardConex Management System
• Bank of America Introduces New Card That Rewards Customers for Good Payment Practices
• Barclaycard Launches Its Latest Balance Transfer Credit Card (UK)
• Spire Payments Acquires Mobile POS Provider Thyron (UK)
• TransCard to Offer New Traveler Prepaid Card

On the web:

• Coinstar Expands Rollout Of Its PayPal-Powered, Coin-Counting Kiosks - TechCrunch
• Samsung Imitates Apple Passbook With New Wallet App Without NFC - Forbes

On the wires:

• 19 mPOS Solutions Achieve MasterCard Best Practices Certification
• Discover Extends Direct Banking Reach with Launch of Cashback Checking Accounts
• Western Union Certifies Ericsson’s Wallet Platform for Mobile Money Transfers
• Mastercard Launches Its First NFC Payment Project in Latin America
• VeriFone and SK C&C Team On Mobile Wallet Acceptance

On the web:

• A Juicy Hands-On With The Facebook Omni-Gift Card - TechCrunch
• Isis to Change Wallet Design; Hires New Wallet App Developer - NFC Times
• Google Quietly Rolls Out New 'Offer Extensions' in AdWords - Search Engine Land
• Tokenization And The Collapse Of The Credit Card Payment Model - Forbes
• More States Consider Ban On Credit Card Surcharges - NBCNews.com
• PayPal Enters Crowded European Mobile Payment Field - WSJ

On the wires:

• PSCU, MasterCard Team to Offer MasterPass to Member-Owner Credit Unions
• Virtual Piggy Integrated into World-Leading Internet Community

Gilbarco Veeder-Root announced that it is working with PayPal on digital payment and other mobile solutions to be offered to Gilbarco customers worldwide.

“Our customers recognize PayPal as a global leader in digital payment, and we are excited to work with them on this innovative payment solution and to collaborate on a number of other retail initiatives,” said Mike Schulte, President of Gilbarco North America. "The PayPal mobile solution will be a cornerstone of our suite of retail applications."

Gilbarco's technology is used by 19 of the top 20 convenience store operators in the U.S. Don Kingsborough, PayPal vice president for retail services, blogged about the partnership here.

On the web:

• ‎Debit Networks Reject MasterCard’s EMV-Durbin Solution - Digital Transactions
• Mobile Ordering Provider 'OLO' Receives $5M in Funding from PayPal and Others - QSRweb.com
• Rogue Valley Merchants Leery Of 'Checkout Fee' Surcharge - Ashland Daily Tidings
• Angie's List, Square Announce Mobile POS Partnership - Benzinga
• Visa Service Restored After Canada-Wide Outage - CBC News
• Google Wallet Gets A Makeover - NFC World

On the wires:

• TransUnion Announces Acquisition of ZipCode in Brazil
• MasterCard Expands Strategic Alliance with Hotel Company IHG into the U.S.
• Merchant Warehouse Announces Availability of 'Genius Customer Engagement Platform'
• MedDirect Launches Online Payment Portal for Patient Responsibility Balances
• PayLeap, Acculynk’s Payments Processing Arm, Introduces Developer Integration Tools
• NCR Silver to Make Everyday Easy for 600 Cellairis Franchise Stores and Their Shoppers

PayPal's parent eBay announced financial results for 4Q2012.

PayPal's active account growth accelerated to 15% and ended the year with approximately 123 million registered accounts. PayPal added nearly 2 million accounts a month in the fourth quarter, representing the company's fastest active account growth rate in years. Net total payment volume (TPV) increased 24%, producing revenue growth of 24%.

eBay reported that the PayPal 'take rate' was 3.72% in 4Q2012, down from the prior quarter, but up 1 basis point from a year earlier. Transaction expenses were 1.03%, down 1 basis points from a year earlier. The loss rate was 0.28%, up 1 basis point from a year earlier.

On the web:

• MissionFish changes name to PayPal Giving Fund - Third Sector
• Shazam Launches Debit Card App for Smartphones and Tablets - American Banker
• European Stripe Clone 'Paymill' Raises $13M - TechCrunch

On the wires:

• Fujitsu Integrates Mobile and the In-Store Shopping Experience With the U-Shop Mobile Application
• WorldPay US to Enable PayPal In-Store Checkout for Business Owners
• Canadian Payments Association Issues RFC on Final Checking Imaging Rules

NCR and PayPal announced an agreement to integrate NCR’s innovative mobile solutions for hospitality and retail with PayPal’s leading digital payment technology. NCR and PayPal will:

• Integrate PayPal mobile payment options into the recently announced NCR Mobile Pay application and NCR Aloha Online Ordering.
• Integrate PayPal mobile payment options into NCR’s Convenience-Go (C-Go) application for petroleum and convenience stores.
• Integrate NCR’s Advanced Marketing Solution (AMS) loyalty and offer management system with the PayPal digital wallet.

NCR’s customer base includes 8 of the 10 fastest-growing Quick Service Restaurants (QSR) and fast casual restaurant chains, 1.2 million retail POS systems and more than 100,000 self-checkout units. PayPal’s global customer base includes 117 million accounts, and has forecasted it will process $10 billion in mobile payment volume in 2012.