Alex Johnson

Mercator Advisory Group's newest research report, EMV in 2016: Breaking Through the Bottleneck, provides an updated outlook on the U.S. EMV migration, including estimates for the issuance of chip credit cards and the distribution and activation of chip-accepting point-of-sale (POS) terminals.

A small change to the Google Android operating system may have a big impact on the design and development of banks' mobile account opening and onboarding processes.

Mercator Advisory Group's research note, Bad News Comes In Threes: Assessing the Future of Marketplace Lending, delves into the myriad of negative developments that have converged recently around the largest U.S. marketplace lenders— OnDeck Capital, Lending Club, and Prosper Marketplace—and provides an outlook on how those developments may reshape the marketplace lending industry (and its intersection with traditional consumer and small business lending) over the next 12 to 18 months.

Mercator Advisory Group's report, Premium Credit Cards: How to Hit a Small, Moving Target, updates key statistics on affluent and high-net-worth consumers. It analyzes statistics that are fundamental to card product development in the U.S. market such as market growth, product ownership, and monthly and yearly card spending by cardholder segment. The report also reviews recent developments in the major card networks’ product platforms and provides an update on new features and benefits of… Show more

Mercator Advisory Group's report, Premium Credit Cards: How to Hit a Small, Moving Target, updates key statistics on affluent and high-net-worth consumers. It analyzes statistics that are fundamental to card product development in the U.S. market such as market growth, product ownership, and monthly and yearly card spending by cardholder segment. The report also reviews recent developments in the major card networks’ product platforms and provides an update on new features and benefits of leading issuers’ superpremium offerings. Show less

Mercator Advisory Group’s research report, Mobile Account Opening: Adjusting to a New Normal, reviews the trends driving consumer demand for and FIs’ interest in mobile account opening (MAO) and outlines the challenges and potential solutions for enabling MAO for different financial products and customer use cases.

Mercator Advisory Group’s latest research note, 2016 Outlook In-Depth: U.S. Consumer Credit Cards examines the continuing trends and emerging innovations that are expected to shape the profitability and strategic plans of U.S. credit card issuers in 2016.

The anemic adoption of traditional, budget-based personal financial management (PFM) services suggests that an alternative approach is needed to add value to customers’ financial decisions. Wallaby represents an emerging approach to financial wellness that doesn’t try to answer the question “Should I buy that?” but rather “How should I buy that?”

Mercator Advisory Group’s research report, Small Business Credit Cards: The Key to Richer Customer Relationships untangles the seemingly contradictory state of the U.S. small business credit card market and provides a set of strategic recommendations for market participants moving forward.

A new wave of financial technology (FinTech) services—for shopping, payments, and financial management—is making it possible for consumers to conduct the vast majority of their day-to-day transactions without ever touching their credit cards or contacting their issuers.

Mercator Advisory Group’s research note, Migrating to EMV: The (Not So) Final Countdown, provides an updated outlook for EMV credit card issuance and point-of-sale (POS) reterminalization as well as an overview of the trends and challenges currently constraining the U.S. migration to EMV.

Mercator Advisory Group’s research report, The Disruptive Potential of Marketplace Lending in the U.S. Consumer Credit Market, explores what exactly that disruption will look like, both in terms of the impact to the $3.4 trillion U.S. consumer credit market as well as the broader strategic implications for established banks and credit card issuers.

One of the hallmarks of our modern, post-recession regulatory environment is the consumer complaint. While people have been grousing about their banks for as long as banks have been around, the recent effort undertaken by regulatory agencies to solicit, catalogue, and respond to those complaints is truly unprecedented for any industry.

Increased competition from challenger brands is disrupting the financial industry. Seamless digital banking has a long way to go. BBVA’s recent acquisition of Simple illustrates the importance of this movement and what it may take for banks to get there.

Amazon.com is a disruptor. This is well established. In a little under 20 years, they have become the world’s largest online retailer. They have ushered in seismic (and often calamitous) changes for their traditional competitors across a huge variety of industries—books, music, consumer electronics, even groceries and IT outsourcing.

In Part One of the search for the credit card’s replacement, I evaluated Square’s payment product—Square Wallet. In Part Two, I will be evaluating Brett King's new start-up Moven.

To put mobile wallets through my “Jurassic Park test” and see if they really should be built (and if consumers should be adopting them), I have spent the last couple weeks testing emerging mobile wallet products—Square and Moven. In a two-part series I’ll walk you through what I have learned, starting with Square.

One of the more interesting challenges lingering for financial institutions in the aftermath of the recession is the mysterious strategic defaulter.

Cross-sell is, and always has been, a core component of financial institutions’ business strategies. However, in today’s market—with lenders looking to grow their credit portfolios and the competition for new customers remaining incredibly fierce—the idea of deepening wallet share with existing customers is even more attractive.