There has been a gold rush into alternative payments from prospectors seeking to dig up the next PayPal. But as with past gold rushes, there have been many claims with few successes. Despite history's lessons, with every new "gold rush" come new hopes of striking a rich consumer vein. It is all enough to make one's head spin trying to parse out the various payment types and business models.

In addition, the alternative payments landscape is morphing, particularly in the eyes of consumers. It is no longer just the underlying mechanism that is important-equally important is the consumer perception of the payment. What's more, mobile payments (a subset of alternative payments), are quickly becoming a viable platform ready to explode with merchant and consumer adoption forever changing the payments landscape.

In this second-edition of The Alternative Payment Systems Industry in the U.S., Packaged Facts presents an in depth examination of the U.S. alternative payments business. The report presents the size and growth of the market and puts it in context to both the business-to-consumer (B2C) ecommerce market and the total "consumer" payments market including card payments and electronic payments (online bill payment). Special regard is given to the activity of top players and the varied upstarts, particularly in mobile payments, hoping to steal share and further alter the old school payments paradigm. Major key competitors are profiled, along with a focused analysis of consumer payment demographics and preferences.

Note: Packaged Facts defines alternative payments as entirely electronic and predominantly conducted over the Internet though not all are conducted through the ACH network. Generally, alternative payments exclude all forms of paper and any debit or credit card where the purchase or remittance is made directly with that medium. The most common alternative payments are consumer-to-business purchases and peer-to-peer, also referred to as person-to-person (P2P) payments.

Research Methodology

These report data were obtained from government sources, trade associations and publications, business journals, company literature, investment reports and interviews of industry players. In most cases, market data span the 2006-2010 period.

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