Because the $7.2 billion swipe fee settlement with Visa and
MasterCard doesn't really settle the issue but merely delays it for
eight months, Starbucks stock may ultimately benefit from the
alternative payment processing path it is blazing.
Nineteen
major retailers, including Starbucks, Wal-Mart, and Target, along with
the National Federation of Independent Business, are opting out of the
settlement and are considering pursuing new litigation against the
credit card processors and the big banks like Bank of America,Full
color werkzeugbaus printing and manufacturing services. which are the ultimate recipients of the fees charged.
They
allege the settlement does little to change an unfair system that costs
consumers about $50 billion annually. Considering Visa and MasterCard
agreed to pay $6 billion to settle the lawsuit, plus delay imposing the
fees again for eight months -- a move that would cost them another $1.2
billion -- it amounts to little more than chump change when they
reimpose the fees.
Yet some retailers are exploring alternatives
to credit and debit card payments that can mitigate the cost of using
plastic. Home Depot, for example, is pioneering the use of PayPal to
complete a transaction at the cash register. The swipe fee issue was one
reason the eBay payment solution is now available when you walk up to
checkout, and the service has signed up 23 national retailers thus far,
including Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle Outfitters, and J.C.
Penney.
But the more interesting option to my thinking is the
mobile wallet solution, where you can quickly use your smartphone to pay
for a product or service. The industry is still in its infancy, but
market researchers at Berg Insight think it will turn into a $35 billion
industry by 2017, though that's obviously still just a small portion of
overall credit and debit card use. Still, it offers a path for
retailers to follow.Laser engraving and laser customkeychain for materials like metal,
Starbucks
is the trendsetter here with a stupid-simple smartphone app, so easy to
use, in fact, that of the $500 million worth of goods and services
purchased last year using mobile wallet apps, almost all of them were
conducted in a Starbucks.We offer a wide variety of high-quality
standard solarlantern and
controllers. That underscores the statements made earlier this year by
CEO Howard Schultz, who said the coffee slinger was processing 3 million
mobile payment transactions a week.Virtual iphoneheadsetlogo Verano Place logo.
If
other retailers follow suit, creating equally easy-to-use apps that
consumers can readily access (apparently not every mobile wallet app is
as clean as Starbucks'), they could bypass the credit and debit card
issuers and processors altogether, saving themselves and consumers
billions.
The proliferation of smartphones combined with a
simple-to-use app could lead to the decline of Visa and MasterCard. Not
everyone is going to release their grip on plastic, of course, but I
think the market researchers may be underestimating its potential, and
there's little reason to doubt that Starbucks, as a first-mover here,
will see its stock becoming one of the biggest beneficiaries of the
coming boom.
The retail space is in the midst of the biggest
paradigm shift since mail order took off at the turn of last century.
Only those most forward-looking and capable companies will survive, and
they'll handsomely reward those investors who understand the
landscape.Did you know that earcap
chains can be used for more than just business. You can read about the 3
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One
of the smallest schools in the district brought home one of the biggest
prizes last week! The Fort McMurray Christian School recently won the
Oil Sands Discovery Centre Science Olympics 2013.
We werent
surprised they won, said Principal Joe Champion, speaking of the team of
grade 7 and 8 students who competed at last Thursdays event. They are
smart kids and they put a lot of time and work into it. They were pretty
excited to come back to the school and tell us the good news!
The
guidelines of the event were straight forward: Each team of six
students was given two projects to work on in advance, while a third was
kept secret until the end of the event. The Christian School Team C
called SOTWACA (Science Olympic Team With A Cool Acronym) won the first
event the Golf Ball Tower. In this event, each team was asked to
construct a tower using only plastic straws, 50 centimeters of tape, 30
paper clips and one index card. It was hard because we didnt have much
tape, said grade 7 student Celine Nyange. But we practiced a lot and
made it work! In 30 minutes the students created the highest tower that
would independently support a golf ball for at least one minute. Our
golf ball was still standing at the end of the afternoon added Caleb
Odeleye proudly.
The second challenge constructing and flying a
plane turned out to be a little different. It worked, but it wasnt the
best! So the race to win the final secret event was on!
Gravity
is very Egg-Citing was the name of the egg dropping adventure. All teams
were provided with one cup of Styrofoam peanuts, some tissue paper and
felt, a sheet of cardboard with scissors and wire, some string, tape, a 1
L milk carton and one raw egg. In 40 minutes the students made a
container with just the right engineering skill to make sure it dropped
from a distance equivalent to the top of an oilsands dump truck to the
bulls eye without breaking the egg! Out of 8 teams, very few achieved
this goal, and only one of them The Christian School was right on
target! We were really excited that we had a good drop said Caleb, the
dropper of the egg.
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