or cards with you. Simply add* Fast Forward to your Safeway Club Card and you'll be able to save and pay in one simple step at checkout. [From Safeway - Fast Forward ] Fast Forward, I'm pretty sure, adds weight to my arguments about the centre of gravity in the payment space shifting more toward retailers. And it's a perfect illustration of the "identity is the new money" meme. Safeway's loyalty card and PIN combination is there to identify you. Once they know who you are, payment is easy. And I think I'm on pretty safe ground with the strategic inclination toward decoupled debit that I've shared here before, especially if the rampant rumours about Google's plastic card version of the virtual debit cards in the Google wallet turn out to be true. Still, it is hard to see the real benefit of adding a plastic card to Google Wallet. I disagree. Merchants will be happy to accept the debit product, which will cost them a Durbin-mandated minimum amount and Google will be happy to pay the difference on the back-end card transaction because Google will know where you are and what you are buying and your card issuer won't. The link with Durbin is complex. There were initial thoughts that the Durbin cap would render decoupled debit propositions uneconomic. Banks, though former critics of decoupled debit, were quick to decry Tempo's exit as the latest casualty of the Durbin Amendment. A recent article in American Banker began, "First it