| Cards: Opportunities Abound In Crowded Payments Field
In the course of a decade, card-based payments have doubled in volume to account for 28 percent of all consumer payments. It's nearly half of the payments pie when excluding the amount spent on auto loans, mortgages and other debt vehicles unsuitable for cards. Credit or debit card use at the point of sale represents 56 percent of all purchases, interchange now accounts for 19 percent of issuers' revenues, and the number of card-accepting merchants now tops 6.1 million. It's obvious that consumers are comfortable swiping cards for groceries, utility bills, morning coffee and hamburgers. But as Celent notes in a new report on payment trends, cards are not close to conquering cash and checks: cards' growth market is $4.5 trillion. Much of that growth is going to be fueled by evolving trends in consumer behavior, added merchant choices and technology, as bank issuers seek innovative ways of building and retaining card customers whose average cost of acquisition is between $50 and $300.
1/25: 99X ends with Green Day
Meanwhile, the new 100.5 format will be introduced at 6 a.m. Monday. At 10 a.m., 100.5 began looping a fake contest offering eight format choices they want listeners to "vote" on, none of which will likely be the actual format. Most are redundant or not commercially viable anymore though a couple could possibly do fine in this market. The eight "formats" are "Trickle," a soft soft rock station, an oldies station, yet another country station, a "death metal" station, an FM talk station, a comedy channel (cue satellite radio!), a "silence" channel and an all-sound effects channel. Somehow, polka and all-Elvis didn't make the cut. Seriously, the station will be a rock format on Monday. Realistically, Rock 100.5 could sound like the old 96rock and straddle between Project and the River.
the has-been
With a Republican Party that loses elections as gracefully as Willkie and loses wars as pre-emptively as Chamberlain, America will forget the Bush presidency ever happened. ... 1:54 P.M. (link) Thursday, May 3, 2007 Animal Farm: As if the GOP needed any more bad omens, this week the Philadelphia Zoo became the latest to join a national trend—giving up on elephants. Now the press can start looking for the next sign of the Republican apocalypse: gun owners turning in their pickup trucks and riding donkeys to work. Perhaps because zoos represent the world the way man would have made it, they have long been a leading political indicator. In retrospect, China's seemingly innocent gift of pandas to the United States three decades ago should have been an obvious warning of its desire for global economic hegemony.
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