In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. Friedrich Nietzsche
Many of today’s market rock stars, including Google (NASDAQ: GOOGLE), Amazon (NYSE: AMZN), (Netflix: NASDAQ: NFLX), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Costco Wholesale (NASDAQ: COST), are momentum stocks. The theory driving these stocks is that the new markets these companies create are capable of generating unlimited growth.
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Since most poor people have or could easily buy a smartphone, the government could simply disperse the aid to an app such as Venmo or Apple Pay. This would eliminate the paperwork, and it could be used to greatly reduce the bureaucracy.
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PayPal will start disrupting the financial services industry as soon as it gets spun off by eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY). Expect PayPal to unveil its version of Apple Pay in the form of a souped-up Venmo and enter the banking industry, possibly by buying a bank.
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The threat to banks is best shown by PayPal’s growth rate. PayPal’s mobile payment volume increased by 72% between the third quarters of 2013 and 2014, growing to $12 billion. Mobile payments now make up 20% of PayPal’s payments. Venmo, a mobile payment App offered by PayPal subsidiary Braintree, saw its payment volume grow by 50% between the third quarters of 2013 and 2014.
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Energy is not the only industry that would be disrupted by falling oil and gas prices. The effect of cheaper gasoline on big retail could be just as profound and wide ranging.
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In a recent Bloomberg interview, Ready makes Venmo and Braintree sound like a sort of Google for financial transactions. That is an open sourced platform through which a wide variety of transactions are made. The difference is that Braintree’s transactions are financial.
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Square has also tried to launch its own payments apps called Square Cash and SnapCash. Square Cash is a payments app similar to Venmo and Apple Pay; SnapCash is a variation of Square Cash reengineered to work over the popular social network Snapchat. In other words, it’s Square’s answer to Venmo. One difference is that it can work with merchants that use Square.
Read MoreIt looks as if Apple Pay users are going to have to go out of their way to find a store that accepts it. That doesn’t bode well for a product that’s being sold as a convenient alternative to cash, checks, and credit cards. Apple Pay does not seem to be very convenient at all.
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