Thanks Reuters, We Too think Visa’s IPO is in Question

Welcome to our growing number of daily readers around the globe. 

While our company’s blog site [Tales from the World of Photo Scanning] enjoys readership around the country, WayooHigh.com with its nearly three-years of news and commentary updates on Visa, MasterCard and its member banks’ schemes is read internationally.

Today’s Reuters story on Visa’s IPO follows our WayTooHigh.com posting after the European market crash earlier this week.  We too think the Visa IPO may be in question. 

Following the presentation to the International Consumer Electronics Show on Jan 8th, next week in Las Vegas, for the International Photo Marketing Association, we again will be addressing a major industry. This time, talking on topics about innovation and public relations.  We will again look forward to hearing more stories from people also impacted by the credit card cartel’s market power as they too are forced to fund the banks’ other fiscal misadventures. 

The photo industry intemiately understands how technology and innovations has helped to lower costs and boost savings, while the credit card associations still maintain nearly 100 separate fees which should, effectively cost just pennies per transaction, but instead grab a share of each total charge for most credit card transactions.

CES: ScanMyPhotos.com CEO Goldstone Speaks at Consumer Electronics Show

Goldstone to speak in Las Vegas at the “Spotlight on Imaging” CES panel on Tuesday, January 8 from 3 – 4 p.m. in the Renaissance Hotel, Ballroom 1

Last update: 8:51 a.m. EST Jan 8, 2008

IRVINE, Calif., Jan 8, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — ScanMyPhotos.com, announced that president and CEO Mitch Goldstone will speak again at the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) as part of a panel discussion entitled: “Spotlight on Imaging.” The session is cosponsored by Picture Business Magazine and the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) which produces the 2008 International CES – the world’s largest consumer technology trade show.

The panel discussion at the 2008 International CES will take place on January 8, at 3:00 p.m. at the Renaissance Hotel, Ballroom 1, in Las Vegas, NV. It will include essential topics about the future of the photo imaging industry and the commercialization of new digital imaging technologies to inspire and enhance the consumer photo imaging experience.

ScanMyPhotos.com, a division of 30 Minute Photos Etc. operates a retail and ecommerce-based photo imaging company that provides super-fast nationwide digital scanning and related photo imaging services. Goldstone and partner, Carl Berman, well-known leaders in the photo imaging industry founded 30 Minute Photos Etc. in 1990 as a retail-based photo center in Irvine, CA.

Today, the company and its ScanMyPhotos.com division provides a variety of photo memory services and products to help picture-takers preserve generations of family memories. These include services using: “Perfectly Clear” photo enhancements by Athentech, professional DVD data discs produced by Microtech’s robotic DVD publishing system, Lucidiom self-service digital photo kiosks, and KODAK’s award-winning i660 document imaging scanners – the engine behind the company’s capacity to digitally scan 1,000 photographs in under ten-minutes.

ScanMyPhotos.com helped commercialize the KODAK document imaging scanners for the photo industry and is profiled on the Kodak.com website. The photo entrepreneurs created a local walk-in and “fill-the-box” scanning service for consumers to order prepaid USPS Priority flat-rate boxes which are mailed out the same day it is ordered. Consumers fill the co-branded USPS and ScanMyPhotos.com prepaid boxes with as many pictures as it can hold (more than 1,600 4×6″ photos). All orders are processed and digitally scanned as jpeg files at 300 dpi and mailed back the same day. The prepaid box costs just $99.95 – consumers also receive a free box when they purchase two prepaid boxes so they can have more than 5,500 photo snapshots scanned for $199.90.

ScanMyPhotos.com, has scanned nearly four million pictures from around the world and was recently profiled or mentioned in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Chicago Sun-Times, The New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Women’s Health Magazine, The Orange County Register, Family Tree Magazine, Popular Photography, Direct Marketing News and scores of other media and Internet / blog coverage.

Click here for complete Special Events CES listing.

Goldstone at CES, Update

Click here to view offical CES schedule

click here to view Businesswire press release

UPDATE: An Extraodinarily Fictional Read, MasterCard® Explains the Value of Interchange Fees

According to a posting on the MasterCard® Newsroom pages, the second largest credit card association writes (what we assert is) extraordinary fiction.

Click here to read it in their own words.

This is MasterCard’s attempt to justify the annual $40 billion fee that merchants and consumers are forced to pay; many are unaware of this hidden tax.

While MasterCard explains that “a number of merchants and merchant trade groups have filed several lawsuits alleging that the U.S. interchange fees that MasterCard establishes violate antitrust laws, and that the cost of interchange is too high,” the litigation is a class-action which represents all merchants – not just a few.

The litigation was brought on behalf of us (30 Minute Photos Etc.), as lead plaintiff, and other businesses and trade associations across the country, not by lawyers. Rather than address the damages, the card association’s published points accuses lawyers for seeking these cases to enrich themselves, rather than discussing the billions-of-dollars that benefit the member banks.

In the case of ScanMyPhotos.com (a division of 30 Minute Photos Etc.) we agree with MasterCard that “every business establishes a price for the goods and services it provides.” in our case, we commercialized an entirely new business model around digitally preserving generations of analog pictures; we designed a technology and operation that also provides ultra low fees. We are not a cartel that artificially fixes prices, in fact, we regularly share our story with the entire photo imaging industry and regularly speak at trade shows like the Photo Marketing Association and even at last January’s (CES) Consumer Electronics Show convention – our rates and how it case about are a secret to nobody.  We will again address CES in January 2008.

In our opinion, the biggest misuse of words is MasterCard’s explanation that the interchange fee benefits to merchants is that it is a “small fee.” Forty-billion dollars each year is anything but a small fee. MasterCard does not fully address the history of these fees and fails to explain that it was created to be cost-based – to cover the manual credit card imprint costs and weighty processing charges incurred when merchants had to mail the paper receipts to have it processed. Today, it is mostly electronic, lightening-fast; and even faster than our super-speedy photo scanning business.

They even use the word “incredible” [”Accepting payment cards provides merchants with an incredible value at a fair price.]” They are right, it is incredible, as in so implausible as to elicit disbelief.

The reality is that with a nearly 80% market dominance, MasterCard and Visa® (which until recently were both owned and controlled [Visa is preparing to launch an IPO] by its member banks) are a monopoly. They control the market. Merchants, like us, are unable to choose not to accept their debit and credit cards – we would be out of business – especially companies like us with a dominant ecommerce revenue stream.

As for interchange fees, it certainly does “help foster… security” but not so much for consumers, as explained by MasterCard, but for the member banks, which look forward to this extraordinarily large cash-cow and unbridled revenue stream; it’s a tax few know about, but generates non-stop riches for MasterCard, Visa and its member banks. If they were so concerned about fraud costs, they would cease the issuance of billions of direct mail solicitations and providing credit cards to risky consumers. Today’s technology is also helping to lower other types of fraud costs, yet interchange fee adjustments do not reflect the cost savings either.

The fees do encourage “banks to innovate and develop new payment options,” but in some cases, to the detriment of cardholders and merchants. Look at the one-hundred plus separate merchant interchange fees which create new revenue streams every time a new innovative scheme is hatched to plunder more money from retailers and cardholders.

When reading the MasterCard explanations, they even discuss how the payment industry is “competitive.” As we see it, the only contest they host is one-way, and the competition is to seek out new ways to increase interchange fees. With an 80% market share, competition is a fleeting dream. Why are rates about 1.7% for an average transaction in the U.S., but only .7% in the U.K, .55% in Australia, and 0.0% for PIN-based cards in Canada?

And, according to MasterCard, they do “recognize that merchants do want lower costs for all aspects of their business.” It is encouraging that they recognize this fact, but if they strive to help lower interchange costs, why then are fees regularly rising?

Words and actions are very different when it comes to interchange issues and our WayTooHigh.com Credit Card Interchange Reportboasts 875 postings since February, 2005. WayTooHigh.com provides our prospective as a long-time retail and ecommerce business.

[commentary: WayTooHigh.com, originally posted Aug 23, 2007]

News on Merchant Interchange Lead Plantiff, Mitch Goldstone at CES

click here for link.

ScanMyPhotos.com CEO Mitch Goldstone to Speak at the Consumer Electronics Show.   Goldstone to speak in Las Vegas at the “Spotlight on Imaging” CES panel on Tuesday, January 8th.

IRVINE, Calif., Dec 17, 2007 (BUSINESS WIRE) — ScanMyPhotos.com, today announced that president and CEO Mitch Goldstone will speak again at the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES(R)) as part of a panel discussion entitled: “Spotlight on Imaging.” The session is cosponsored by Picture Business Magazine and the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA(R)) which produces the 2008 International CES – the world’s largest consumer technology trade show.

The panel discussion at the 2008 International CES will take place on January 8, at 3:00 p.m.  It will include essential topics about the future of the photo imaging industry and the commercialization of new digital imaging technologies to inspire and enhance the consumer photo imaging experience.

ScanMyPhotos.com, a division of 30 Minute Photos Etc. operates a retail and ecommerce-based photo imaging company that provides super-fast nationwide digital scanning and related photo imaging services. Goldstone and partner, Carl Berman, well-known leaders in the photo imaging industry founded 30 Minute Photos Etc. in 1990 as a retail-based photo center in Irvine, CA.

Today, the company and its ScanMyPhotos.com division provides a variety of photo memory services and products to help picture-takers preserve generations of family memories. These include services using: “Perfectly Clear” photo enhancements by Athentech, professional DVD data discs produced by Microtech’s robotic DVD publishing system, Lucidiom self-service digital photo kiosks, and KODAK’s award-winning i660 document imaging scanners – the engine behind the company’s capacity to digitally scan 1,000 photographs in under ten-minutes.

ScanMyPhotos.com helped commercialize the KODAK document imaging scanners for the photo industry and is profiled on the Kodak.com website. The photo entrepreneurs created a local walk-in and “fill-the-box” scanning service for consumers to order prepaid USPS Priority flat-rate boxes which are mailed out the same day it is ordered. Consumers fill the co-branded USPS and ScanMyPhotos.com prepaid boxes with as many pictures as it can hold (more than 1,600 4×6″ photos). All orders are processed and digitally scanned as jpeg files at 300 dpi and mailed back the same day. The prepaid box costs just $99.95 – consumers also receive a free box when they purchase two prepaid boxes so they can have more than 5,500 photo snapshots scanned for $199.90.

ScanMyPhotos.com, has scanned nearly four million pictures from around the world and was recently profiled or mentioned in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Chicago Sun-Times, The New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Women’s Health Magazine, The Orange County Register, Family Tree Magazine, Popular Photography, Direct Marketing News and scores of other media and Internet / blog coverage

lead Plantiff, Mitch Goldstone to Address CES

The co-founder of 30 Minute Photos Etc and ScanMyPhotos.com will be announcing in December that he was invited to again address CES: the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January. This is the world’s largest consumer trade show and is the second year that Mitch Goldstone has been invited to present.  As a well-known photo imaging industry speaker, he regularly explains how technology has changed the entire photo imaging industry and created entirely new revenue centers, such as the super-fast nationwide photo scanning service which his company has become famous for.  He expects to again use the example of how credit cards were once cost-based; requiring extensive paper work, thick carbon copy receipts and manual imprinter machines.  Today, just as with his photo imaging and scanning business, everything is lightening fast and much more cost effective.  What he once charged $5.00 for is now low as 2.5 cents.  Conversely, the member banks are accused [by us] of continuing to conspire to illegally fix billion of dollars in fees; fellow retailers are forced to accept whatever charges are demanded.  As a retailer and ecommerce business, 30 Minute Photos Etc. and ScanMyPhotos.com are beholden to Visa and MasterCard and their 80% market power.  Most ecommerce businesses are forced to accept those two leading payment cards to stay in business.

More details on CES in December.

 [Source: WayTooHigh.com]