PayPal's President Scolds Employees For Not Using PayPal

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PAYPAL PRESIDENT IS MAD HIS EMPLOYEES DON'T USE THE PAYPAL APP. In a leaked memo PayPal President David Marcus had some choice words for San Jose office employees who don't use the PayPal app or forget their PayPal passwords. "That's unacceptable to me, and the rest of my team, everyone at PayPal should use our products where available. That's the only way we can make them better, and better," says Marcus in the email.

Marcus's words drew both praise and criticism from social users. We think he has a point. PayPal is facing stiff competition from the likes of Amazon, Google, and perhaps even Apple, as well as a host of payment startups. Many of these companies offer their customers something beyond a method of payment and that will help them gain momentum. PayPal has only eBay to build their businesses off of, and this puts the company at a serious disadvantage. So if the company is going to stay strong in the payments space it can't have employees who are uninterested or less than devoted to the product they create. (Venture Beat)

MOBILE WALLET JOINT VENTURE SELECTS PAYDIANT FOR MOBILE PAYMENTS INFRASTRUCTURE. The Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) is a joint venture between a handful of large retailers, including Target, Walmart, and Wendy's. The scope of the venture is still shrouded in mystery since it hasn't officially launched yet, but we do know that a big part of it has to do with mobile payments. Yesterday, MCX announced that it had selected Paydiant to supply its white label cloud-based mobile payments infrastructure, which will allow customers to make purchases at points-of-sale using their smartphones.

Retailers are joining forces on MCX as a way to combat the growing power of online giants and mobile operators in the world of digital payments. In particular, they don't want to share their purchase data with companies like Google and Amazon. So the only solution is to create their own mobile wallet technology and try to get their customers to adopt it. (PR Newswire via Paydiant)

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Bitcoin is designed so well for small business owners ... Credit cards are built against small business owners; it's laughable. Ten years from now, I'm very confident we won't be using credit cards" - Daniel Lee, a Brooklyn retailer who accepts Bitcoin. (Payments Source)

HEARTLAND PAYMENTS SYSTEM GETS A NEW CHIEF BRANDING OFFICER. Michael McMillan will join Heartland as its chief branding official, the company announced today in a press release. McMillan previously toured as a motivational speaker and worked as CEO of McMillan Associates, a visual communications firm, which he founded in 1984. (Heartland Payments Systems)

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MERCHANT SERVICE PROVIDER OFFERING TABLET POINT-OF-SALE. We recently covered payments processor First Data's new tablet-based point-of-sale Clover Station. Yesterday, PNC Merchant Services, a subsidiary of PNC Financial Services Group, announced that it would now offer Clover Station to its restaurant clients. Clover Station is another in a host of new point-of-sale solutions that offer integrated business management software. It's an indicator that hardware providers and payments processors are moving beyond the point-of-sale in an effort to woo merchants. (PNC)

U.S. BANK PILOTS VOICE BIOMETRICS FOR SMARTPHONE PAYMENTS. Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank is integrating new software into its banking app that allows customers to use their voices as a password for accessing account information and making payments. There are two reasons for the integration. First, nobody likes entering their password on the small screen of a smartphone. And second, passwords have been proven time and again to be easily compromised. Adding an easy-to-use biometric pass-phrase is a novel, but unproven solution to both of these problems. (Banktech)

U.K. RESTAURANT WAGAMAMA SIGNS UP FOR E-COMMERCE WITH VISA. Visa offers a product called V.me which allows users to make payments by simply entering their email address and password. The idea is to make e-commerce and mobile commerce easier by removing the need for users to enter their credit card number and their card's expiration date. Wagamama has 100 restaurants in the U.K. and offers an online and mobile takeout service, which will integrate V.me as a method of payment. (Finextra)

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