How Visa Corners The Debit Card Market With Fees

Debit cards are such an routine part of commerce these days that we seldom reflect on them. For most consumers, the 2-3 seconds it takes to swipe is about the only time they pay their debit card any mind at all. However, a recent New York Times article reveals that Visa spends more time thinking about debit transactions than anyone — and for good reason. Depending on how we swipe, Visa stands to gain or lose a astronomical amount of money in fees. So much, in fact, that retailers like Costco to Walmart restrict how you use your debit card whenever you buy something. Because so much of this happens behind closed doors, Billshrink decided it was important to sum up the Times’ findings for our readers.

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Fortune’s Top 100 Fastest Growing American Companies

Along with its annual Fortune 500 list, Fortune magazine also publishes a wide variety of other lists, all pertaining to some aspect of the world’s biggest companies and industries. We’ve taken Fortune’s “Americas’ Top 100 Fastest Growing Companies” list, analyzed it and broke it down by region, state, and notoriety of each company. We also included the methodology behind how the list was formed. You might just be surprised by where some of your favorite — and even your not-so-favorite — companies ranked in 2009.

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The 12 Biggest Mergers in American History

Mergers are fairly common as far as business activities go. In fact, it is probably safe to say that businesses of one size or another join forces every day of the week, due to the increased efficiency or market share such arrangements offer. Not all mergers are so casual, however. Indeed, some companies, simply by merging, send waves throughout the economy, sometimes changing the way business is done within entire industries. With billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of employees and untold amounts of intellectual property changing hands, it could hardly be any other way. Today, Billshrink analyzes the 12 biggest mergers in American history with an eye toward the economic impact each of them had.

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12 Reasons Companies Outsource Operations Overseas

One of the most controversial (and least understood) issues in business and politics is outsourcing. Politicians condemn it, businessmen defend it, but rarely does anyone step back and take a dispassionate look at why it occurs at all. What are the incentives compelling over half of tech executives (as just one example) to put more of their operations in the hands of overseas workers? Today, we’ll sidestep the rhetoric, scapegoating, and press releases to examine 12 factual reasons companies outsource their operations.
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