Visa Announces Digital Wallet Launch

 

Photo of a RBC Visa taken under a UV light to ...

In what is sounding to be a service similar to PayPal, Visa is launching a digital wallet service for ecommerce shopping. Like PayPal, the Visa digital wallet will let you keep your information in the digital wallet, so that when you go to an ecommerce site, you don’t have to fill in the long forms usually required for the billing and shipping address. With this feature, I’m also making the assumption that, like PayPal, you would not be required to register at a site in order to purchase from that site.

Since this is Visa, there is a large contrast with PayPal in that there is no option to withdraw from you bank account; at least there is no mention of that ability in the article. The exception to this would certainly be if you were using a Visa branded debit card that withdraws from your checking account.

Implications for Ecommerce Site Owners

With a service like this, the consumer or buyer can remain anonymous on your site. They never have to fill out a form, leaving you with little information after the transaction has been made. How do you bring them back to your site again? When the buyer is checking out, they will have an option to opt-in for offers and future promotions. This is a really good thing, because they are actually giving you permission to send them promotions for your product.

Those site owners that store credit card information would not need to do that anymore. This means that you don’t have the liability of storing financial information of others.

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Linux Turns 20 Years Old [Video]

As the Linux operating system turns 20, the Linux Foundation has produced this video that serves as a quick recap of the life cycle of Linux. The video does a great job of taking the viewer to the origins of Linux to the massive use of Linux by businesses and the internet today.

Credit Cards Declining as the Means of Online Payment

First 4 digits of a credit card

Image via Wikipedia

In an article on Mashable, Bill Zielke cites  that online use of credit cards continues to decline, representing a sustained and ongoing change in consumer behavior.

When you are online and shopping, whether it be on your PC, notebook, or your smart phone, the physical credit card is just an inconvenience to pull out and type in the information from your credit card. Many consumers  also have the fear of posting credit card information online, for fear that it will be misused in a fraudulent way. There are online services (Paypal and Google Checkout for example) that make online transactions much more convenient and add a layer of security in that your credit card information isn’t necessarily shared with the online retailer or service.

What do you think? How do you pay when making online transactions?

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