How does the payment card ecosystem work?

There are five entities in any card transaction. The cardholder, the merchant, the acquirer, the card scheme and the card issuer. The cardholder is usually a person looking to buy something. The merchant is someone like Booking. The acquirer is a company like Adyen. The card scheme is Visa or MasterCard. The card issuer is a bank, Barclays for instance.

Flow of information

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Flow of money
When the payment processor receives the transaction data, they bill the cardholder and deposits the money to the merchant's bank account. The bank account must be a merchant account.

The payment processor

A payment processor, also known as an acquirer, is the one that receives card transaction details (name, card number, expiry date, CCV code). They then pass on the information to the card issuer via the card scheme for authorisation. When you buy something from Booking.com, they pass on your card details to Adyen, that send the information to MasterCard or Visa, that send the information to Barclays. Barclays then authorise the payment, via the card scheme, to Adyen, to Booking.com. 

The main job of the payment processor (besides passing on the information) is to deal with chargebacks and to respond to request for information from the issuer. 

There may also be a payment gateway between the merchant and the payment processor. It is prohibited (at least in the US) to send transaction details directly from a website to a payment processor. The payment gateway acts as a physical payment terminal.

Source

The merchant acquirer

The merchant acquirer recruits the merchant to join the network and provides front-end and back-end services. The merchant acquirer routes the transaction to the payment processor. 

The card issuer

The job of the card issuer (typically a bank) is to issue card, bill the card holder and collect payment.

The card holder

The credit card holder's liability is limited to $50 in the US (regulation Z). Regulation E affords similar limitations on liability to debit cards.

The issuing bank

The issuing bank is responsible for authorisation of the payment. That means checking that the card holder has sufficient credit and carrying out fraud checks. After authorisation comes clearing and settlement. Settlement is the process of clearing the debt incurred by the card holder when the purchase was made. Clearing is a set of transfers that happen after purchase and before settlement. Money usually don't change hands. Instead, lots of transactions are netted. Clearing also includes meeting reporting requirements and the exchange of information this entails. The most common example of clearing is the exchange of transaction information from the merchant to the bank.

What is authorisation?

Authorisation is the process of obtaining permission from the bank that issued the card to accept the card for payment. 

What is clearing and settlement?

Clearing and settlement is the process of sending transactions through the Visa or MasterCard network so that the merchant can be paid for the sale

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What Coen brothers movies are on UK Netflix?

Do you also love the Coen brothers but don't know which of their movies are on Netflix? I've solved the problem for you.

Here's the full list:

Year of release	Title	On Netflix UK?
1984	Blood Simple	No
1986	Crimewave	No
1987	Raising Arizona	No
1990	Miller's Crossing	Yes
1991	Barton Fink	No
1994	The Hudsucker Proxy	No
1996	Fargo	Yes
1998	The Big Lebowski	No
1998	The Naked Man	No
2000	O Brother, Where Art Thou?	No
2001	The Man Who Wasn't There	No
2003	Intolerable Cruelty	No
2004	The Ladykillers	No
2006	Paris, je t'aime: "Tuileries" segment	No
2007	Chacun son cinéma: "World Cinema" segment	No
2007	No Country for Old Men	Yes
2008	Burn After Reading	No
2009	A Serious Man	No
2010	True Grit	No
2012	Gambit	Yes
2013	Inside Llewyn Davis	No
2014	Unbroken	No
2015	Bridge of Spies	No
2016	Hail, Caesar!	No

Not a lot by the Coen brothers on Netflix UK unfortunately.

How to define a market segment

These are the characteristics of a market segment:

• They have matching needs
• They can reference each other

Source

Greeks use Revolut's app to skirt capital controls

Judging from the interest on Google for the prepaid card and payments app from the London based fintech company Revolut, the are experiencing rapid growth at the moment. Interestingly, most of the searches are coming from Athens. 

With capital controls still being in place in Greece, and many Greeks having a hard time getting cash out, it seems like locals have discovered the benefits of having a foreign card. A bit of Googling shows that it is being recommended as a way to skirt restrictions. A novel use of the company's product. Will fintech play an increasing role in the future in times of financial uncertainty?

Elements of a great product launch

From Jeff Whatcot's presentation entitled "elements of a great launch".

What is a launch? Externally, it's a public announcement that secures widespread coverage in press and social media and builds your brand leadership position and drives a surge in demand for your products.

A great launch is an effective way to add to the power of your go-to-market strategy.

Here are the essentials:

• Timing: anticipate industry communication waves and pick one to surf
• Influencers / customers: get some influencers and customer references on board well beforehand and tell them what to say
• Pre-brief: go deep with one or more outlets so they can write something substantive and thoughtful
• Messaging: capture the key points in a press release or thought-provoking blog post and make this the bible for your pre-briefing work
• Show don't tell: a great demo video is worth a thousand slides

Make sure to watch the video as well. Jeff Whatcot gives some interesting examples from his experience with company and product launches.

Download link for Google Trends data

Enter keywords

You need to be signed in to Google for the link to work. You can enter up to five words.

1:
2:
3:
4:
5:

Once you have downloaded the data, you might want to parse it to get a clean table.

Load file to parse data

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Get Google Trends download link with javascript

The URL_GT function I use to collect Google Trends data was previously implemented with R. To make it easier to download Google Trends data, I created a javascript implementation. Use the code below, or get it from Github.

If you want all data, it's enough to enter a keyword. You can add an array of up to five keywords to compare. To download the data, simply click the link generated.


'use strict';

function URL_GT(keyword, country, region, year, month, length){
  
  var start = "http://www.google.com/trends/trendsReport?hl=en-US&q=";
  var end = "&cmpt=q&content=1&export=1";
  var geo = "";
  var date = "";
  var URL = "";
  var month=1;
  var length=3;

  
  //Geographic restrictions
  if(typeof country!=="undefined") {
    geo="&geo=";
    geo=geo + country;
    if(region!==undefined) geo=geo + "-" + region;
  }
  
  if(typeof keyword==="string"){
  var queries=keyword;
  }
  
  if(typeof keyword==="object"){
  var queries=keyword[0];
    for(var i=1; i < keyword.length; i++){
      queries=queries + "%2C" + keyword[i];
    }
  }
  
  //Dates
  if(typeof year!=="undefined"){
    date="&date="
    date=date + month + "%2F" + year + "%20" + length + "m"
  }
  
  URL = start + queries + geo + date + end;
  URL = URL.replace(" ", "%20");
  return(URL);
}