Paying with Plastic

Plastic cards -- The star -- The main characters -- Other members of the cast -- Behind the stage -- The foreign cast -- The thirteen acts -- From seashells to electrons -- The evolution of money -- Buy now, pay later -- More than money -- Dining on the cuff -- 1958 -- The birth of co-opetition -- Regulation and stagflation -- The 1980s' spending and debt spree -- The 1990s and the rise of the debit card -- The golden anniversary and beyond -- From gourmets to the masses -- The growth and diffusion of payment cards among U.S. households -- Using payment cards to execute transactions -- Credit card lending : joys, sorrows, and controversies -- Credit cards and entrepreneurship -- Room for growth -- From Sardi's to Saks.com -- Getting to be everywhere you want to be -- Getting cheaper and better -- Not everywhere yet -- Paying for plastic -- It takes two to tango -- Multisided platform economics 101 -- Business models in multisided platform markets -- Multisided platforms and price setting in payment cards -- Co-opetition and the payment card ecosystem -- The co-opetitives -- Cooperation, the tragedy of the commons, and the role of rules -- The co-opetitives, the go-it-alones, and payment card ecosystems -- System wars -- Weapons of war -- And they don't take American Express -- Master the possibilities -- The card that is just like a check -- Issuer brawls -- Who are the players? -- Product variety and market segmentation -- Competitive strategies -- Market structure -- Market performance -- Debit issuance -- Backroom battles -- The evolution of the payment processing business -- Who's who in the back room -- Market structure and performance -- The antitrust wars -- Harm to competitors or harm to consumers? -- Who's in, who's out? -- Who pays for plastic? -- Square pegs and round holes -- On the brink -- Technologies from the exotic to the merely smart -- E-commerce, e-payments, and m-commerce -- Shaking up the marketplace -- And they don't take cash.