Revolution Money

It was a fairly slow news week but there was one development that will affect nothing less important than the way that people pay for online products and services. American Express purchased Revolution Money, a payment company started by AOL founders Steve Case and Ted Leonsis.

Revolution Money was built from the ground up as an online payment system, somewhere in between PayPal and traditional cards. There is no name or account number on the card and coupons/discounts can easily be built into the system. The Alarm Clock blog documented the savings on the merchant side where exchange fees are closer to .5% than the customary 2.2%. The obvious need is for American Express is to build a consumer base. Gigaom was one blog that wondered if anyone was using the card right now. That might change with the huge Amex database involved. The WSJ's Digital Daily wrote about Revolution's ability to dislodge PayPal, (outside of the C2C market) with innovative solutions and strong Amex backing.

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