"We are going to compete not just with PayPal, but other emerging payment schemes," so says Joseph Saunders, CEO of Visa. It's a statement that could be taken as a rallying cry for all traditional card companies, as they ponder the future. Visa has taken some noteworthy steps toward this goal, though the proof will ultimately be in the product launches and the revenue capture.

In September, Visa said it was committing more resources to Authorize.Net, beefing up an already existing platform for third-party developers that Visa acquired as part of its CyberSource deal--which gave it a suite of mobile and emerging technologies. Visa has also worked with DeviceFidelity to put Visa capabilities in mobile phones through a microSD data card. The company has even been feting "an integrated mobile network that we have been working on for a number of years."

As for American Express (NYSE: AXP), it has created an online and mobile unit tap emerging payments opportunities, Enterprise Growth. Amex also has big plans for Revolution Money, which it bought to fanfare this year. It is now called Serve Enterprise.

Nothing revolutionary has come out of the traditional card payments industry so far. It's mainly been promises and rhetoric. As Bill Gates often noted, it's hard for powerhouse firms to maintain dominance as technology paradigms shift. IBM gave way to Microsoft, which gave way to Google.

What remains to be seen is who will emerge as the next payments juggernaut. It's fair to say that the card companies have a huge installed base to be leveraged. Of course Microsoft boasted the same advantage.

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