Image copyright Gregory James Van Raalte

Financial institutions are embracing digital offers out of necessity because revenue from current sources is in decline. The future of the payments industry is shifting quickly to monetizing consumer relationships — particularly through mobile devices — and away from extracting new value from the payments value chain.

What many do not know is that credit card companies have experienced significant pain as a result of the capping of their lucrative interchange fees by the Durbin Amendment, which became effective in 2011. Faced with declines in what had previously been a significant form of revenue, credit card companies know that they need to open new sources of revenue. This need is becoming ever more urgent with companies like Google and Paypal joining the mix and leveraging their unique assets — novelty, retailer relationships, and extensive technology infrastructure.

The opportunity here is massive — total real-world (not online) retail commerce is $4 trillion a year in the U.S., and eMarketer just reported that mobile advertising is expected to increase by 180 percent in the coming year to reach $4 billion. Credit card companies looking to take their fair share of this revenue need to figure out how to leverage their great relationships with consumers to open up new sources of revenue.

Here are my suggestions for strategies that will help credit card companies come out ahead in 2013:

Stop chasing Chase. Instead, start acting like a media company.
To open new sources of revenue through media and technology, banks need to add new DNA that is not focused on traditional banking concerns such as regulatory compliance, security and fraud. Of course, I am not suggesting that they stop complying with regulations, or that they abandon security. But banks must become more nimble at attacking new revenue opportunities — particularly in consumer offers. At Google and other companies in Silicon Valley, teams still pull all-nighters to release alpha versions of products for consumers and partners in a matter of days to test an experience, an approach that is antithetical to the banking world. Yet if banks want to succeed in the media world, they have to figure out how at least part of their organization can play in an API-driven ecosystem that encourages collaboration and rapid product releases. First test for the C-suite at banks: Have you developed and released anything new to consumers in a single quarter?

Play ball with the competitors.
Consider the value of the ecosystem in growing your mobile offers initiative. In order to succeed in delivering a great mobile rewards program, the key is having a rich supply of merchant offers upon which to layer targeting. No one company is going to assemble enough, so think instead about collaborating with all the other players and getting the network effects of a larger audience and a bigger pool of offers. An interesting model for this kind of collaboration is WEVE in the UK, in which three mobile operators — EE, Telefonica UK (O2) and Vodafone UK — have banded together to form a large consortium. The individual companies behind the consortium still compete to acquire subscribers, but they now collaborate with a common platform for monetizing those subscribers through marketing.

Turn that marketing focus inside out.
Now that you have a great offers program, the biggest challenge is getting enough customers into it to move the needle. Each card provider today has marketing teams that focus solely on signing up new customers for their credit cards. Yet somehow, these are not the folks developing new digital offerings. These customer acquisition teams are digital media experts. Imagine focusing that valuable marketing experience on getting consumers to opt into new and sophisticated customer reward programs, and to download their new rewards apps. It is customer acquisition, pure and simple.

Don’t wait for big data.
My last and most controversial suggestion for 2013 is to let go of the obsession with big data! Many banks are building huge databases for micro-targeting customers with niche offers. Microtargeting is cool, but believe me, media is a war of attrition and all of that big data-based targeting will yield a customer segment of just a few people. Brands do not want to target only a select handful of people with their offers; they need to reach a million people in order for their investment in creating and distributing that offer to make economic sense. Silicon Valley has managed to convince enterprises that massive amounts of data will build a program that really performs in terms of offers and sales; but ultimately, microtargeting is not monetizable at scale until there are an equally large set of available offers. The real way to success is to provide a great experience with lots of offers for your entire customer base. Yes, there are a handful of important variables that should be considered, including location, time of day, gender, interests and even retargeting; but other data on top is gravy and too much is at odds with reaching a large enough number of people with relevant offers. The “big picture” is not always based on big data. (Hint: You might derive as much value from customers by asking them what they want instead.)

The Long View
As Bob Dylan said, “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” Credit card companies can no longer hesitate while other companies race forward to make a profit on this kind of consumer spending. If credit card companies employ the strategies I propose, they will be real contenders against the likes of Paypal, Google, Apple and the mobile operators. The weather forecast is clear for mobile offers: Sunny, with billions of dollars blowing in the wind. It’s up to each financial institution to figure out how to get to market faster and catch some of it.

Alistair Goodman is the CEO of Placecast, where he leads a team of mobile, technology and marketing experts who have created the most scalable, proven, location-based marketing system currently available. Alistair has more than 20 years of experience working in marketing and product development efforts for media and technology companies.

In a major exec departure, Square COO Keith Rabois will be leaving the San Francisco payments company.

Square gave no other information about the sudden management change, but sources said disagreements between Rabois and CEO and founder Jack Dorsey were part of the reason for his exit.

It’s not clear if there were more serious issues between them, or whether the parting was related to a specific business problem. But the departure of the No. 2 exec is significant, so definitely more to come on what happened.

In a statement about the move, Rabois only said:

It is amazing what Square has accomplished since August of 2010. When I joined, there were 17 engineers all reporting flatly to Jack. The local coffee shop served as our interview room. Leading our amazing crew has been the most rewarding professional journey of my life. I am forever grateful to Jack, for his confidence in me and to each and every member of the team for allowing me to learn from them.

But every day matters. And it is better at this point for me to be doing something different every day.

As a result, I’ve decided to resign from Square. I am very excited about what lies ahead for the company. Square could not be better poised for greatness.

I will have more to share about my next opportunity soon.

Said Square’s Dorsey:

Today I accepted Keith’s resignation from Square. When he joined, we had fewer than 30 employees and under 1000 active merchants. Today, over 3 million individuals and businesses are able to accept credit cards with Square, processing over $10 billion annually. We couldn’t have done it without him and we wish him well in his next opportunity.

Square CFO Sarah Friar will become acting COO, Square said. It’s an unusual move to put an exec without a lot of deep operational experience in the second-most-important slot at Square, though the former Goldman Sachs analyst and Salesforce.com finance exec is clearly familiar with the heart of the company’s business.

The change in top management comes at a time of fast growth for the three-year-old Square, which completed a $200 million funding round in the fall that valued the company at $3.2 billion. At the time, the company said it had more than 400 employees and would grow by 100 more by year’s end.

Square is best known for allowing a range of small businesses, such as taxicab drivers, to accept credit and debit cards using their mobile phones. But it has also branched out into other mobile payments areas.

Besides his stint at Square, Rabois is a well-known angel investor in Silicon Valley, and serves on several boards, including Yelp’s. He has worked at many startups, too, including PayPal (acquired by eBay) and Slide (acquired by Google).

The Palo Alto, Calif., company is officially announcing a $100 million fund today. It will target the financial services sector, which has seen a flood of startups over the past couple of years as companies try to create new ways for customers to pay using online and mobile services.

Several companies have sprouted up to challenge incumbent providers, such as Square, but many other large institutions, like PayPal and Google, are also interested in making transactions digital.

Ribbit is critical of the amount of innovation that has occurred to date. Fittingly, Ribbit’s motto is, “It takes money to change money.”

Today’s announcement by Ribbit is its formal launch, but since getting off the ground last year, it has made four early-stage investments. They are:

• Borro: The U.K.-based startup provides financing to high-net-worth individuals who want cash for their fine arts, antiques, vintage cars and jewelry.
• Fuze Network: A U.S.-based payments company that provides merchants with new ways for their customers to make payments at banks and retail locations nationwide.
• ContaAzul: The company provides accounting and invoicing solutions to small and medium-sized businesses in Brazil.
• Capital Access Networks: A non-bank lender to small businesses.

The fund was founded by Meyer Malka, who goes by the name Micky. He has been an active entrepreneur in the space — he co-founded Lemon, a mobile wallet company, and Bling Nation, a mobile payments company — and currently serves on the board of Wonga, an alternative lender for consumers and businesses.

Malka has a global perspective, having lived all around the world, including stints in Venezuela and Brazil, where he witnessed more than half of the banks fail.

Ribbit’s investors include Spanish banking group Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, Silicon Valley Bank, and various institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals.

gracious_tiger / Shutterstock.com

In each of its last four quarters, eBay has posted double-digit year-over-year revenue growth. Looks like the company’s fourth quarter was no different.

After market close Wednesday, eBay reported fourth-quarter earnings of 70 cents per share on revenue of $3.99 billion.

Analysts had expected eBay to earn 69 cents a share, excluding one-time items, on revenue of $3.97 billion. During the same period in 2011, eBay earned 60 cents a share on $3.4 billion in sales. So this quarter’s performance was a dime better.

As in quarters past, eBay’s beat was driven by the strong performance of its Marketplaces and Mobile business. Marketplaces saw growth in the U.S. increase three points. And, as CEO John Donahoe pointed out in the company’s earnings release, Mobile really blew things out. “EBay mobile finished the year with $13 billion in volume — more than double the prior year — and PayPal mobile handled almost $14 billion in payment volume, more than triple the prior year,” Donahoe said. “In 2013, we expect each to exceed $20 billion.”

For fiscal 2012, eBay’s revenue increased 17.8 percent to a total of $14.072 billion.

The three new vice presidents being announced today are tasked with helping the payments company change the way consumers pay for things online, on their phones and at the register.

“In years past, we’ve grown too conservatively,” said PayPal’s CTO James Barrese. “We are reinventing ourselves with a cadre of new talent. I’m completely reinventing the organization, so that the top technologists can have a huge impact on where we are going.”

The three hires are:

Arnold Goldberg, VP of Customer Experience Engineering. Goldberg most recently came from Box, where, as VP of Engineering, he helped establish the cloud-based sharing platform. At PayPal, he will work on coming up with new technology for PayPal’s small businesses and merchants.

Koby Avital, VP of Architecture and Infrastructure. Avital comes from Microsoft, where he led the company’s service-oriented architecture strategy and platform development. At PayPal, he will lead strategic architecture, infrastructure and innovative research.

Ryan Granard, VP of Platform Engineering. Ryan comes most recently from DreamWorks Animation, where he built an internal platform that was able to scale globally. He was also an early employee of Webvan, the online grocery service. At PayPal, he will be in charge of building internal cloud services.

Other recent hires include Douglas Crockford, who was appointed senior JavaScript Architect, and Bill Scott, senior director of User Interface Engineering.

In October, PayPal eliminated the jobs as part of a restructuring that reduced the number of product groups it had from nine to one. The eBay-owned company said it wasn’t about cost reductions, but about streamlining product development.

The most notable change was that mobile was no longer a standalone group, but was moved directly into all of the product lines. Similarly, its parent company conducted the same restructuring just last month.

“We set up ourselves to be focused on new strategic areas, so I’ve been going out and aggressively looking for the type of talent we need,” Barrese said.

PayPal will need all the talent it can get to achieve its lofty ambitions.

Not only does it want to be a consumer’s preferred form of payment online and on mobile phones, it is also entering the offline world by enabling payments for small merchants or large retailers like Home Depot. Its big push into retail will happen this year, but a lot of finesse will have to occur behind the scenes in order to get it all to work together seamlessly.

At the same time, it will be competing against other crafty companies in the space, including Square and Groupon, to name just two of the entrants interested in payments over the past few years.

PayPal’s emphasis on building up a strong technology team kicked off in earnest last March, after PayPal named David Marcus as president. Marcus, who had joined the company previously through the acquisition of Zong, filled the vacancy left when Scott Thompson suddenly left to become CEO of Yahoo.

Since Marcus’s appointment, he has been vocal about the changes he wants to make at the company, saying, “There’s a massive culture change happening at PayPal right now.”

The hires today are just more evidence that he’s willing to back those words up.

On Wednesday, the San Jose-based company will report fourth-quarter and year-end earnings, and eBay is expecting the holidays to have treated it well.

For the fourth quarter, it is projecting earnings per share of up to 58 cents on revenue of up to $4 billion. For the full year, profits are expected to be as high as $1.99 a share on up to $14.1 billion in revenue.

Analysts are a little more cautious.

The consensus is calling for eBay to earn a profit of 61 cents in the fourth quarter and $2.05 a share for the full year. Those numbers are best compared to eBay’s non-GAAP projections, which exclude some items. On a non-GAAP basis, eBay is projecting to earn up to 69 cents a share for the quarter, and up to $2.35 a share for the year.

One analyst, however, recently revised his target, saying he expects eBay to now hit the projected 69 cents a share.

The rise in the stock price over the past year stems from the work eBay has done to overhaul its marketplace business.

The turnaround has included fixing back-end technology, like search algorithms, and revamping the design, including a new logo and homepage. Innovation is also occurring in delivery with programs testing same-day delivery and pickup services. As the transformation has started to take hold, eBay has started to attract new users to the site via TV commercials.

Operating alongside eBay is its buddy, PayPal, which also had a strong year. In the third quarter, the payment division saw revenue jump 23 percent compared to the year earlier.

One particular subject the company will be eager to talk about this quarter is how much growth it is seeing from consumers shopping on their phones and tablet computers. In the third quarter, it forecasted that eBay and PayPal would each transact $10 billion in volume this year over mobile, or more than twice what they recorded in 2011.

It will not be a surprise if eBay blows past these numbers, given the number of times it has revised its figures upward. Other third-party reports confirm what eBay is already witnessing.

For instance, last week, eMarketer reported that U.S. sales over mobile devices increased 81 percent, to nearly $25 billion, in 2012. At that level, it said, mobile devices accounted for 11 percent of total U.S. e-commerce sales. In comparison, I’ve been reporting for the past few months that eBay’s mobile revenue is closer to 16 percent of its total sales (but those figures have been based only on estimates).

Amazon is reportedly generating half as much, or around 8 percent to 10 percent of its revenue from mobile.

Finally, analysts won’t just be looking for a recap of the company’s 2012 accomplishments on Wednesday, but will also be looking for hints about the future.

The big question on everyone’s mind is whether eBay can maintain its growth for another year.

On the marketplace side of the business, eBay anticipates growing revenue by helping brick-and-mortar stores like Toys “R” Us and Macy’s compete online. Meanwhile, PayPal has been slowly expanding into in-store payments, with the hope that 2013 will be the first year it brings in revenue from the business (or at least that’s what eBay hopes).

On Friday, eBay’s shares traded 1.3 percent higher to close at $53.70, which is just shy of its 52-week high of $54.20 a share.

Image copyright koya979

Most of us don’t use rotary phones, beepers, dial-up Internet or fax machines anymore. Yet we still use magnetic stripe credit cards and outdated point-of-sale systems. Payments technologies continue to lag far behind the technological adoption curve, and adopting new technologies as they become available has been a slow process, with hurdles that include legacy infrastructure and costs.

That said, 2012 saw some major leaps forward for the payments industry. Between Squarebucks, PayPal, Google Wallet, Isis, LevelUp and MCX, the mobile payment wars have just started to get exciting.

But despite the progress, the prediction that 2012 would be the “Year of Mobile Payments” didn’t come true. Now some people are arguing that, “someday we may look back and say [2012] was ‘The Year Before the Year of Mobile Payments. ‘”

Maybe so. Maybe 2013 will be the year we finally stop using insecure payment technologies from the 1980s and 90s. The year where paying with your phone will finally become mainstream. Here’s how 2013 could change everything:

Merchants Will Decide Who Wins the Payment Wars
People often wonder what it takes to win the so-called payment wars. Getting the most users? Forming an alliance with a big brand or a major credit card? Deploying salespeople everywhere? The answer is: none of the above. Merchants, often the so-called “Main Street” businesses, will be the ones who decide which apps will emerge victorious from the mobile payments battles (and there won’t be just one victor).

Here’s why: The mobile payment revolution isn’t just about giving customers a trendy new way to pay. It’s more about finding solutions that will deliver new value for the consumer (discounts or rewards for loyalty, for instance). In turn, mobile payment apps can drive new and repeat business for the merchant.

When it comes to emerging victorious, other factors — especially security — are important. But benefits to the consumer and the merchant are the number one determining factor. When both parties get something great out of mobile payments that they never had before, then the revolution will prevail; it will be win-win for everyone.

The Hyperlocal Sales Model Will Fail
Is it easier to knock on five million doors, or to play nicely with payment systems that already exist?

Well, that’s kind of a loaded question, but it underscores the biggest problem that mobile payments have faced so far: Scaling. In 2013, two things could replace the inefficient hyperlocal sales model and encourage wide-scale adoption of mobile payments.

First, merchant payment processing systems need to adapt — and quickly — to accept a wide variety of payment options (preferably, all of them.) Additionally, the checkout process with mobile payment apps needs to move just as quickly as (or, better yet, faster than) a credit or cash transaction.

Second, payment apps need to play nicely with existing systems. Incentivizing merchants to try your new app is nice, but not an effective way to scale. Instead, the name of the game is cooperation.

Paradigm Shift: The Mobile Wallet Is Your Smartphone
It’s much easier — and better — to create a mobile payment app than a mobile wallet. Eventually, the phone will become the mobile wallet, and consumers will have a variety of payment and loyalty apps to choose from, depending on which places they visit most. No single system will rule them all.

Don’t believe me? Think about your own physical wallet right now. You might have a Macy’s card, a Capital One Visa, an American Express Gold, a loyalty card from your grocery store, and a dozen others. None of those could replace or encompass all the others. Your wallet does the encompassing. And, eventually, the phone will be no different — a storage space for all your payment and loyalty apps.

Security Is Important (Really Important) — So Expect to Hear More About It
Security is one of the biggest hurdles that will have to be surmounted to enable the widespread adoption of mobile payments. That’s because plenty of consumers are (rightly) concerned about the security of new payment options.

The good news is that mobile payments are actually significantly more secure than legacy payment options like mag stripe cards. The average mobile payment app has far more data points at its disposal than a magnetic card. It can verify your identity and intent much quicker and more accurately than this type of card. Plus, since we’re glued to our personal tech for much of the day, people will notice and report a stolen or lost phone much quicker than a credit card used just once or twice a day.

Another important security feature is tied to the power of over-the-air updates to apps. These can both refresh apps with the latest security features and turn the app off in seconds in the event of a breach.

Once merchants and app developers can convince consumers that mobile payments are secure, they will quickly become the dominant solution.

Mag Stripes Will Go the Way of the Dial-Up Modem (Adios!)
As I alluded to earlier, the technology in the magnetic stripe credit cards that most Americans use on a daily basis is more than 40 years old. It’s also highly vulnerable to fraud. And despite various protections against fraud, the U.S. loses about $8.6 billion dollars every year on credit card fraud, according to the Aite Group. Yikes.

EMV (short for Europay-Mastercard-Visa, its founders) is the way of the future. EMV uses a smart chip embedded in the card to store sensitive account data securely. In fact, it’s so much more secure than magnetic stripe credit cards that every major global region has already adopted the technology en masse … except the U.S.

Why is the most tech-savvy country on the planet lagging behind here? The reasons are complex, ranging from expense to legacy infrastructure to powerful lobbies. But while we’ve been able to procrastinate on upgrading our systems for decades, the economics of putting EMV into the field are now starting to make real sense.

The emphasis on EMV at a recent payments conference could be a bellwether, and the year 2013 should see some major strides in the EMV direction.

Mobile Will Level the Playing Field for Brick & Mortar in This E-commerce World
Brick and mortar businesses have some real competition in e-commerce, and (admit it) we’re all guilty of indulging in a little showrooming here and there.

Mobile has the power to level the playing field for brick and mortar again, and 2013 is the year we’ll start to see this happen for real. For example, advances in mobile payment technology will soon make it possible for people to find the exact product they’re looking for, when and where they need it.

Let’s say it’s February 12. You’ve procrastinated on buying a Valentine’s Day gift for your sweetie. You know what you want to buy, and you could order it online, but you’re worried it won’t show up on time (and don’t want to pay an extra $20 for overnight shipping.) With new mobile technologies, merchants can track inventory down to the individual product and connect shoppers directly with that data. This will give consumers a strong incentive to buy from a local merchant rather than take their chances with e-commerce. Plus, they’ll get the benefit of checking the item out with their own hands and eyes before they buy.

This, along with new customer loyalty and promotional opportunities, will make it possible for brick and mortar stores to get really competitive vis-a-vis e-commerce this year. Watch out, Amazon!

So, are you planning on making any big changes to the way you pay (or accept payment) in 2013?

Henry Helgeson is the CEO and co-founder of Merchant Warehouse, a recognized leader in payment and commerce technologies.

When the company posts its Q4 results next week, we’ll know exactly how much mobile contributed to eBay’s revenue in 2012, but based on the new moves, it’s clear the online shopping giant is preparing for another banner year for mobile.

As part of the reorganization, which took place at the end of last year, mobile is now reporting into the company’s main marketplace division, rather than being a standalone product group.

The restructuring is similar to moves that other companies are making now that smartphones and tablets are becoming a main part of the user experience, and not just a second or third screen.

Steve Yankovich, eBay’s former VP of mobile and main spokesperson on the subject, has been appointed VP of innovation and new ventures. In his new role, he will focus on the company’s Red Laser application, which allows users to find product information by scanning a bar code. He is also working on developing new mobile experiences.

Additionally, Kevin Hurst, who was previously VP of product management at eBay Mobile, is now VP of mobile products. Instead of reporting to Yankovich, as he previously did, Hurst is now reporting to Dane Glasgow, the VP who heads up the company’s marketplace division.

Hurst will be based out of Portland, Ore., where eBay operates an office with 100-plus employees focused on mobile.

In an interview with AllThingsD, Hurst said it’s clear “we’ve gone through our incubation phase. We are pretty much going mainstream [with mobile].”

I’ve written about eBay’s mobile momentum before, mostly because it’s impressive. As of the end of September 2012, its apps had been downloaded 100 million times, and users have listed 100 million items to its marketplace using the app. It also forecast mobile revenue to hit $10 billion in 2012. Based on that estimate, I’ve calculated that mobile will make up about 16 percent of its total revenue.

That’s roughly double the percentage I reported last week based on one analyst’s recent estimate for Amazon’s mobile revenue.

The new apps being released today on iPhone and iPad are designed to decrease friction for both buyers and sellers in the marketplace.

For example, shoppers will find that the search bar now features auto-complete to anticipate what they are typing. The apps also provide an improved check-out experience, by allowing guests to make purchases without registering for an eBay or PayPal account, which was required in the past.

“It was a huge hurdle,” Hurst admits. “We’ll be working in 2013 on reducing that friction more.”

Selling has also become easier for those who like using their camera phone to take pictures of the item they are selling.

Now when listing items from the iPhone or iPad app, eBay will complete many of the fields for the user, especially in electronics, which have common characteristics. For instance, when attempting to sell a Kindle Fire, the app automatically fills in all the tablet’s specifications and provides a standard photo. It even makes suggestions for a sale price based on eBay’s current inventory.

Posting an item could literally take just a couple of minutes.

Additionally, the listing process can be started on the mobile phone and completed later on the tablet or PC.

“It’s very common for people to use their iPhones to access eBay and then later on iPads and then the PC. This multi-device world allows people to switch from one device to the other,” Hurst said.

Currently, eBay does not allow users to list items on eBay through the mobile browser because of technical limitations, like lack of access to the phone’s camera from inside the browser. “For the foreseeable future, we won’t offer it on the mobile Web,” Hurst said. “When it’s ready, we’ll add that.”

Both the iPad and iPhone apps are free and are available in iTunes. The Android application has already been updated with some of the new features, but a fully functional version will be available soon.

Nicolas Raymond / Freestock

According to comScore’s final tally for the November-December shopping season, spending for the two-month period totaled $42.3 billion, a 14 percent increase over 2011.

“This year’s growth rate is essentially on a par with last year’s,” said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni. “But despite many positives for the online sector, this year’s season did not quite perform up to our initial expectation for growth rates in excess of 16 percent as we fell a billion dollars short of our expected total of $43.4 billion.”

The research firm, which tracks online shopping habits over broadband connections in the U.S., said a slowdown occurred after Thanksgiving due to low consumer confidence.

“As it turns out, this December swoon coincided closely with a significant decline in the University of Michigan consumer sentiment index that was attributed in large part to consumers’ fiscal cliff concerns. You might say that had it not been for Congress, every other indicator suggested it would have been an even merrier Christmas for online retailers,” Fulgoni said.

This season’s high points included some particularly outstanding days for online retailers, including Cyber Monday, Nov. 26 ($1.5 billion); Monday, Dec. 17 (up 76 percent to $1.013 billion); and Christmas Day (up 36 percent to $288 million). But those good days could not make up for three solid weeks in which the growth rates failed to surpass 12 percent.

Here’s a week-by-week breakdown of spending this season. A noticeable lull is present during the middle weeks:

This softness may have been expected based on preliminary results that some retailers released this morning. The figures indicate that sales may have been soft for many in December, not just online retailers.

For instance, Target said sales in December were flat; and Wet Seal, Macy’s and Kohl’s either cut their fourth-quarter outlooks or said quarterly results will be at or near the low end of their previous guidance range, according to MarketWatch.

Online sales are still growing at a much faster clip than retail as a whole. For instance, overall, December same-store sales, excluding drug stores, rose 4.8 percent, according to data from Retail Metrics.

While comScore’s report may be disappointing to some, it won’t affect all online retailers evenly.

For one thing, comScore’s results don’t include purchases made over mobile phones. Mobile commerce, which includes orders placed on tablets and phones through mobile browsers or applications, were a highlight for many retailers this holiday season. Second, there will be some retailers that overperformed and others that lost share.

As an example, Baird Equity Research’s Colin Sebastian raised eBay’s price target earlier today to $60, up by $2, based on evidence that eBay and PayPal excelled during the holiday season. The company’s full results will be out on Jan. 16.

And the one to watch closely will be Amazon.

Many brick-and-mortar companies resolved to fight the giant e-tailer by guaranteeing to match online prices. Whether that had any impact is still not known. Additionally, there was some question earlier this holiday season if Amazon was performing as well as expected.

Wells Fargo Analyst Matt Nemer said that for the first time in years, Amazon was giving some customers coupons for 10 percent off their orders. But it was unclear whether Amazon was only trying to reactivate old customers or if it was doing it because sales were short. Another plausible reason was that customers were procrastinating. Amazon allowed some customers to order as late as Dec. 21 with the promise of delivery by Dec. 24, which may have delayed some purchases.