American Express

By Dov Cohn

San Jose, Calif. – eBay Inc. is reversing course on its previous decision to keep its fast-growing online payments business PayPal as part of the company, and is instead spinning the unit off as a separate publicly traded company. The decision will generate $180 million for activist investor Carl Icahn, who attempted to force eBay to spin off PayPal in a public dispute earlier this year. It comes as the payments sector is heating up and generating increased interest as Apple gets set to launch its Apple Pay mobile payments service.

It’s official. Following a strategic review of the company’s growth strategies and structure, the eBay board has approved a plan to separate the company’s eBay and PayPal businesses into independent publicly traded companies in 2015, subject to customary conditions.

American Express has promoted Neal Sample, currently Enterprise Growth’s chief information officer and chief marketing technologist, to president. He will report to American Express CEO Kenneth I. Chenault and will serve as a member of the company's operating committee.

Sample replaces Dan Schulman, formerly group president of Enterprise Growth, who has resigned his position to become CEO of eBay’s spun-off PayPal business.

By Howard W. Herndon

By Dov Cohn, Bronto Software

New York -- Costco Wholesale Corp will stop accepting American Express cards at its stores in Canada, effective January 1, 2015.

“The credit card relationship between American Express and Costco Wholesale Canada will not be renewed when it expires on Dec. 31,” the company stated in an e-mail to Canadian customers.

Costco’s U.S. locations will continue to accept American Express Cards, with the exception of TrueEarnings and American Express Platinum Cash Rebate cards issued in Canada, the chain said.

By Howard W. Herndon, BlackLine Payments Advisors

While much of the attention at this week’s Apple press conference was on the iPhone 6 and the company’s new smartwatch, we believe — along with many industry analysts — that the most important news of the splashy event was Apple Pay, the company’s new mobile payments system.