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Aircraft carrier is an awesome sight: it's huge, full of energy, impressive in all respects. It's worth a lot of money too. However, when you see an aircraft carrier on the horizon heading towards you at full speed, that means one certain thing - it is going to crash, due to its maneuvering capabilities (stopping distance, turning circle, etc.)
Good captains don't let their ships run aground, but even the best of us are sometimes talking to a lighthouse...
At the recent LeWeb conference, PayPal's David Marcus attacked NFC and praised Bitcoin. In his blog, he also made some predictions for 2014 (which reminds me to do mine - after all, I got 6 out of 7 right in 2014).
I'll leave Bitcoin aside (although I was surprised by his "it's a great place to put assets" comment in respect of a highly volatile instrument...) and focus on PayPal's strategic vision.
I've seen comments out there that are predicting a bright future for PayPal in payments (some even called it "the budding 4th payments network"). I am not so sure about that.
We haven't seen any major innovation from PayPal for years, just some copycat actions. Internally, PayPal's main strength is in fraud management. Externally, their strength is in checkout convenience. When (again, not "if") the latter is overtaken by the card scheme's wallets (or by the next-gen iTunes...), the former becomes irrelevant.
What could PayPal do to remain relevant and even gain ground? Two things.
1. "Federate" Bitcoin or offer a similar alternative. (JP are already on it...) 2. Develop EMV "iWallet" (a physical device) before Apple, Google, Samsung, Square or Coin do it.
Anything else is just a corporate chest-beating.
This content is provided by an external author without editing by Finextra. It expresses the views and opinions of the author.
Oleksandr Strozhemin Co-founder and CEO at Trinetix
13 August
Elaine Mullan Head of Marketing and Business Development at Corlytics
12 August
Abhinav Paliwal CEO at PayNet Systems- A Neo Banking Software Platform
Donica Venter Marketing coordinator at Traderoot
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