Nice article below discussing some upcoming tech &
payment developments. I wonder if near-future
wearables have a chance of being accessible out of
the box. We can always hope, or, hey, we can begin
contacting the companies now, hey, now there's an
idea. (smile)
Strive On!
Everett
As Payments Go Mobile, PayPal's Next Boss Is
Obvious
By focusing on apps and developers, Braintree's
Bill Ready created a future PayPal almost missed.
Lucky thing he already works there.
Author: Owen Thomas on Publish date: June 09,
2014 Section: Mobile Interaction
http://readwrite.com/2014/06/09/bill-ready-braintree-paypal-david-marcus
PayPal, the eBay-owned global payments company, is
reeling from the seemingly abrupt departure of its
president, David Marcus, for a new job at
Facebook.
When I interviewed Marcus in March, he seemed
fully dedicated to his job, outlining a vision for
how mobile payments would be money's third phase,
succeeding both cash and plastic. After joining
PayPal three years ago through the acquisition of
Zong, his mobile-payments startup, and shortly
afterwards becoming its president, Marcus reshaped
the company's culture and streamlined its unwieldy
array of products into the simple notion of buying
things with your phone.
Why PayPal's Ready For Ready
Along the way, though, PayPal, in Marcus's words,
"fell asleep at the wheel" when it came to
developers. It failed to make its products simple
and appealing enough for app creators to
incorporate PayPal as a payment option. Into that
void stepped a Chicago-based company, Braintree,
led by entrepreneur Bill Ready, a veteran of two
payments startups.
Braintree won customers like Airbnb, Uber, and
HotelTonight, and bought Venmo, a startup whose
person-to-person payment app competed with
PayPal's basic money-moving service. Unable to
catch up, PayPal bought Braintree for $800
million-and brought Ready into the fold.
I sat down recently with Ready to discuss how
Braintree was doing under PayPal. He laid out a
compelling vision for how payments would be
transformed by the inexorable rise of mobile.
On the desktop, he said, "everything is
intent-driven." In other words, we type something
into a browser and get a response based on our
input.
"On mobile, it will be context-driven," Ready told
me. He already has engineers building versions of
Venmo for Google Glass and the Pebble smartwatch,
anticipating a time when wearables will be
mainstream devices.
It's hard to imagine a better candidate to run
PayPal. Ready has already shown he can lead a
payments company focused on mobile products and
developers. He now runs PayPal's developer
relations, which he's combined with Braintree's
efforts. And he's got an eye on what's coming
next.
And he's already stepped into Marcus's shoes on at
least one job duty: He's speaking in Marcus's
place at Southland, an upcoming tech conference in
Nashville.
There's also the obvious question: If not Ready,
who could eBay hire to run PayPal? While Marcus
assembled a talented crew around him, like product
chief Hill Ferguson and VP of growth Stan
Chudnovsky, none of his top executives besides
Ready are obvious choices to succeed him. And if
eBay passes over Ready, he might well leave-which
would leave PayPal down even more executive
talent.
#Mobile#PayPal#Braintree#David Marcus#Bill
Ready#Mobile Payments#Payments#Online Payments#app
developers#app payments 1.3K?
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