Attended an interesting TiE-DC Crystal Ball event on The Future of Payments

Dickson Chu, Vice President, Global Merchant Services Product Management, PayPal, Inc described about how PayPal is a cool frontend to the legacy ACH (Automated Clearing House)system developed by banks to clear inter-bank transactions. They are now competing with credit card companies and allow customers to make electronic payment transactions.

Pragnesh Shah, President and CEO, Mobilians, Inc. talked about their desire to make a cell phone a credit card and a wallet.

Paul S. Dwyer, Jr, Co-founder and CEO, Viamericas Corporation is working on reducing the cost of immigrant remittances to families in their native countries. They leverage to technology to transmit cash quickly and inexpensively. Over 300bn are remitted annually from the developed world to developing countries. Wow!

Craig Underhill, EVP and Chief Lending Officer of Freedom Bank of Virginia moderated the disucssion.

I did learn that payments have two components: messaging and settlement. Also, one of the big innovation opportunities in payment processing is methods to reduce the high Interchange fee charged on credit card transactions.