Market Mad House

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. Friedrich Nietzsche

Digital Wallets

Opportunities

Nine Threats to Banks

Cryptocurrencies are a menace because they can form the basis of a wide variety of financial products including loans, bonds, and savings account. A major threat to banks is that fast-growing altcoins such as Bitcoin and Ethereum provide a better hedge against inflation than cash. Particularly dangerous to banks will be cryptocurrency Visa and MasterCard products that allow payment at brick and mortar stores with altcoins. Also on the horizon are cryptocurrency banks such as Change Bank. A major threat is that cryptocurrencies will become the money transfer mechanism of choice, allowing consumers to cut out banks completely.

Read More
My Thoughts

Would Basic Income Encourage or Discourage Work?

Our existing mechanism for wealth redistribution; jobs, is no longer working. The bottom 50% of Americans own just 12.8% of the wealth; as recently as 1970 they owned 20.8% research by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez indic

Read More
Long Ideas

PayPal keeps growing like Crazy

Those revenue figures demonstrate that PayPal is capable of sustained organic growth. They also show us that its business is capable of long term growth. What’s more impressive is that revenue growth is occurring without Amazon’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) help.

Most people know that you cannot use PayPal on Amazon, but Dan Schulman has been trying to change that. The PayPal CEO told Bloomberg Technology he is in conversations with Amazon but would not reveal details.

Read More
Long Ideas

Is PayPal the Best Value in Finance?

Interestingly enough the biggest threats to PayPal among these solutions; will be Chase Pay and Walmart Pay. Apple Pay is not a direct threat to PayPal, because it is a niche product that major retailers are refusing to use. That might change this fall; if reports Apple is planning to offer online payment via Apple Pay for the holiday season are true.

Read More
Opportunities

Apple Pay and Vending Machines

More importantly, payment apps could give vending machine operators a regular cash flow, that they could tap almost instantly. There would be less time spent counting money or making bank deposits. This could reduce the work and expenses of vending machine businesses.

Read More
Long IdeasStocks

JPMorgan Chase: Will It Dominate Digital Wallets?

The monster bank’s real secret weapon could be automatic teller machines (ATMs). News reports indicate that Chase is developing a card-less ATM that is supposed to work with digital wallets like Chase Pay. The advantage to this is obvious: It allows digital wallet users to get cash.

Read More
Good StocksStocks

Apple Pay’s Fatal Weakness

Some retailers, such as Walmart and dollar store operators, might view Apple Pay as a niche product that only appeals to a small upper-income segment of the population. If you look at Apple Pay’s website, you see a multitude of high-end urban brands such as Whole Foods and Petco but a shortage of working-class retailers. Bloomingdales is present, but Kmart is nowhere to be seen.

Read More
Good Stocks

Who Is Using Apple Pay?

It looks as if the purveyors of digital wallets are going to have to do a lot of old fashioned marketing if they want to get the public to accept their products. That might give Current C an advantage in the digital wallet wars because some of the companies behind it, such as Kroger, are very good at marketing.

Read More