Well, if you didn't go to the Electronic Transactions Association meeting in San Francisco August 14 through 16, then you missed a really good industry forum. The Visa party alone would have been worth the trip. This meetingwas very well attended with well over 600 in attendance, a number that was bigger than the annual meeting in New Orleans, and uncommonly large for a mid-year meeting. The attendance size seemed to be a shock to everyone, including ETA staff. San Francisco must be a good site, or perhaps people who can't afford to go to the next annual meeting in Hawaii thought they would come to the mid-year meeting instead.
In addition to ample opportunities to meet and greet, a lot of off-line meetings and business do take place at the ETA. The overall program in San Francisco was better than average, with mostly strong break out sessions and some very limited ones, such as the discussion on ECP, which began with a description of the invention of the check and provided very little else (I really felt sorry for a most distinguished panel, each member received only one very weak question). Perhaps the best session of the event was the poorest attended (51 people), which was called "Total Market Domination" and was delivered by Doug Dayton, formerly of Microsoft.
The keynote from Robin Abrams, VeriFone's new President and CEO, was excellent, although I heard a couple of complaints, like you always do, that it was a VeriFone ad. (It wasn't.) In Ms. Abrams "Mining the Gold" speech about the future of the industry, she noted that she believed that the value to be added in our industry in the future is in software, not hardware, which is a strong statement from the Chief Executive of the largest POS equipment manufacturer in our industry. Ms. Abrams further noted that technology is not driving the industry; value-added service is.
Coining the term "Coopetition," a cross between Cooperation and Competition, best sums up Ms. Abrams view of both VeriFone and the current direction in the marketplace. A view which recognizes the fact that a number of "partnerings" and "outsourcings" are taking place between organizations that may help each other increase the value proposition to their customers, and yet compete with the very same partner on another front. The future of both acquisitions and 'virtual' corporations will accelerate this direction in the near future. Speaking of equipment design, direction, and meeting market needs, Ms. Abrams noted VeriFone'scommitment to provide solutions for every payment need, noting further that 55% of all payments are checks and that checks aren't going away anytime soon. In addition, she noted that SET and SSL each have their place and will both need to be supported as we move forward on secure transactions. These points among several others were the "Gold Nuggets" that Ms. Abrams described as the opportunities that remain in the marketplace.
I personally was very happy to hear Ms. Abrams thank the ISO industry for being the "feet on the street" for the last two decades and to "acknowledge, realize and appreciate it." She further noted, "The salesman is part of the value chain, and I don't see that going away in the future."While I was thrilled to have seen the ISO industry recognized, I was sad that there were not more ISOs present to hear it. Based on my discussions with people at the meeting as well as a simple count of the pre-registered attendees, it appears that less than a third of the attendees were ISOs. This particular meeting drew many banks; equipment vendors; check businesses; leasing companies; Visa, MasterCard, and American Express personnel; Telco's; Retailer Associations; forms companies; software organizations; network consolidators; and even some non-bank processors, but a disproportionately smaller number of 'selling types'.
Too Bad!
