June, 2021

• 1 June

  The Double Payoff in Contactless Plastic

  

  The transition to contactless payments offers a rare opportunity to meet another priority by ushering in sustainable payment cards. Through the Covid-19 pandemic, business operations and consumer interactions with their finances have fundamentally changed. The past year has seen a major acceleration in the shift away from cash, with the …

April, 2021

• 30 April

  Digital Currencies And the Future of Payments

  

  Stablecoins in particular hold significant promise for such functions as cross-border payments. But banks will need to make important adjustments. Innovation in the payments space is occurring at an astonishing rate, with new technology capabilities enabling huge strides to be made in enhancing speed, transparency, and efficiency in transaction processing. …

January, 2021

• 1 January

  How Far Will Pay By Palm Go?

  

  Amazon’s latest technology has the contactless trend on its side, but experts question its mainstream usefulness. Amazon.com Inc.’s culture is rooted in three primary principles: Don’t be afraid to take risks; find new ways to engage with customers; and imagine what consumers want before they do. Those principles have helped …

December, 2020

• 1 December

  Smart Phones Go Contactless

  

  Software-based options are proliferating for merchants who want to use their own mobile phones for payment card acceptance. Are we entering the era of Square II? Square Inc. made payments history a decade ago with its iconic dongle that enabled iPhones to accept payment cards (“How the Twitter Guy Changed …

October, 2020

• 1 October

  Your Smart Phone Is Your Terminal

  

  Momentum is building fast for card acceptance on ordinary mobile phones. And now Apple could be the next player in this increasingly important game. The drive to turn mobile devices into point-of-sale terminals without requiring a plug-in card-acceptance device, such as a dongle, got a big shot in the arm …

July, 2020

• 1 July

  ‘We’re All Omnichannel Now’

  

  The pandemic accelerated developing trends at the point of sale. POS vendors that have mastered hardware, software, and processing could be best positioned to benefit. When the novel coronavirus struck in March, it drove consumers into their homes, leading to a surge in e-commerce spending. Brick-and-mortar merchants soon learned the …

June, 2020

• 1 June

  The ABCs of APIs

  

  This special code has made possible everything from mobile payments to open banking. Now, get ready for the next stage in the evolution of this remarkable technology. It seems like it was just yesterday that a group of technology experts from the major California banks were sitting around a table …

May, 2020

• 1 May

  Wellsprings of IoT Payments

  

  The Internet of Things has always had a gee-whiz factor, but unshowy sectors such as utilities, insurance, and purchases for business and household essentials are leading its payments growth. The Internet of Things seemed to be big even before Silicon Valley techies and their marketing-side allies started using the term …

April, 2020

• 1 April

  Transit Payments in Transition

  

  Public-transportation fare payments are morphing from closed-loop magnetic-stripe cards to contactless cards and mobile payments. Up next: One app to pay for all, including scooters, bikes, and shared rides. Tokens are long gone and magnetic stripes are going. Contactless is coming. Beyond that, one app for all? That, in a …

February, 2020

• 1 February

  Easing the Pain at the Table

  

  EMV is here, but widespread adoption of pay-at-the-table devices has yet to happen. Could that be changing? When the U.S. payment card industry converted to chip cards using EMV technology more than four years ago, hopes abounded like diners queuing up to eat that the ability to pay at the …