Card scheme: investments' diversification
- The international card schemes Visa and MasterCard noted a strong increase in the field of the e-commerce in 2010.
- They now begin to directly address consumers, without using banking intermediaries, their historical customers. Their new products (Visa Rightcliq and MasterCard MarketPlace) provide Internet users with new services such as an e-purse, possible online social shopping service, discounts, etc. MasterCard also launched a R&D unit (MasterCard Labs) designed to sell these new payment offers as soon as possible.
- Both Visa and MasterCard acquired an e-PSP (CyberSource for Visa and DataCash for MasterCard) to reach a larger number of e-merchant customers.
- All these initiatives were encouraged by PayPal's increasing threatening position: its number of users grew more than 15% compared to 2009. In addition, 40% PayPal payments are not processed through the two major card schemes' networks, but directly debited from the user's bank account.