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I am not surprised by this layoff. Ecommerce has been around for a long time now. The Corona virus is almost over and so is the exponential ecommerce growth. Amazon is feeling it a slow down big time. There is a lot competition in this space. Stripe's layoffs will enable their competitors to take some share.

This is not going to happen. There are market factors that will support the need for credit cards, namely consumers need a loan. In the U.S.about 2/3 of all credit cards have loan balances. The other 1/3 loose money.

Interchange pricing has always been a cash cow for Visa's member banks. It generates $ billions in revenue for cardholder banks. As the industry has reduced processing costs and fraud losses, there is always a tendency to not share lower expenses and fraud losses with merchants. Amazon forced Visa's hand to lower interchange. This is good news to the merchant community. More large merchants should challenge Visa to realize value form the new economics of card processing. Remember efficiencies realized from processing and fraud reduction should always drive reductions in interchange fees.

$29 billion is a lot of money. I guess I am getting old. I would have paid only $29 million.

There have many attempts to bring alternatives to Visa and MasterCard. As a former employee of both entities I know they are a market force with lots of money and a brand that is trusted. To start a new global brand and technology platform would cost billions of dollars. Technology has indeed taken quantum leaps. If they had to do it all over again their solutions would much more superior than the current two message system. i remember when it took 4 weeks for an international transaction to clear. Both have made significant steps in their authorization and clearing systems. But much more needs to be done. I would advise both Visa and MasterCard to build their next generation solutions using a single message while at the same maintaining in parallel their two message system for some period of time.There are newer technology solutions in the market; e.g.. Faster Payments.

There are alternatives to Visa and Mastercard. It only takes a few large merchants to opt for new payments schemes. Let the free market figure this out, not government!

Whoever buys them needs to be careful. ACI is not known for its customer loyalty. Many of their customers do not like their contractual terms and conditions, and sales tactics. Win for them; lose for you!

It sounds like I am getting some opposition to thinking "big". There is no better time than now to reach for the stars. Promoting the status quo using existing schmes, platforms and brands does not create new and innovative solutions that can provide much more value to consumers, merchants and supply chain providers. Yes, think about supply chain providers in this new world. Old brands and technology serve the status quo. Consumers deserve the best from society. Technology, creative marketing, capital and people can do it! I'm the guy who did it 50 years ago. Why not now again? It is time to totally revamp payments schemes.

Those cards are co-branded. Synchrony Bank owns the loans and gets most of the profit. I am suggesting a much bigger play here. Namely, Amazon starts their own branded Network for all merchants just like Discover's and sets up their own Amazon Bank to manage the loans.

I've seen many occassions where bank executives sacrifice security to make a few more bucks. It always comes back to get you. Never underspend on auditing and security.