March, 2019

• 1 March

  Does Cash Need Legal Protection in Stores?

  

  Efforts to ban cashless stores are afoot in New Jersey and some of the nation’s largest cities, including New York. But does cash really need legal protection from payment cards and mobile wallets? That’s the question public officials as well as payments and retail executives are mulling. Opponents of cashless …
• 1 March

  Kroger Takes the Proprietary Route in Mobile Payments

  

  Grocery-store giant The Kroger Co. is joining the ranks of retailers with a proprietary mobile-payments service, and adding a debit card to boot. Cincinnati-based Kroger, which has 2,800 stores under numerous banners, last month unveiled Kroger Pay and its accompanying Kroger Rewards debit card. Kroger Pay, available for iOS and …

January, 2019

• 31 January

  Security Notes: Crypto And the Tax Man

  

  It’s ten years since Bitcoin made its big splash. More than a thousand coins now follow in its footsteps. Digital coins are still a tiny fraction of worldwide money movement, but the hype is on. Very serious financial experts and economists predict a rosy future for this new technology. Many …
• 31 January

  Remember TSYS’s Vital Brand? It’s Now a POS Product Suite

  

  Payment processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) last month unveiled a line of point-of-sale terminals and services for small and mid-size businesses, and took its Vital brand out of a 13-year retirement as the name for the new product suite. The cloud-based Vital POS has three major components: Vital Mobile, …
• 31 January

  The Mega-Merger Nobody Expected

  

  In a stunning announcement that surprised many observers last month, Fiserv Inc. struck a deal to acquire First Data Corp. with what the parties say will be the biggest ever such transaction in the payments and financial-technology businesses. The all-stock deal, expected to close in the third quarter, values First …
• 1 January

  Security Notes: Lessons From the Marriott Hack

  Last month, the world learned that hackers had been violating Marriott’s customer database for four long years without being detected. How many similar outfits are being violated as we speak? People in my profession know that if a breach is detected and there is a chance to hide it from …
• 1 January

  Venmo Hopes Revenues Stream in With Its Hulu Pair-Up

  

  In a marriage of convenience, movie and TV streaming service Hulu LLC says it now accepts PayPal Holdings Inc.’s Venmo peer-to-peer payment service. Hulu could be a major win in PayPal’s ongoing effort to increase the popular Venmo’s profitability because the service will generate a recurring revenue stream. For Santa …
• 1 January

  Is Facial-Recognition Technology Hurting Apple Pay?

  

  Adoption and usage rates for the mobile wallets from Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc. (Google), and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. have been far from stellar, but now evidence is emerging that Apple’s decision a year ago to ditch fingerprint identification on its newest smart phones in favor of facial-recognition technology could …

December, 2018

• 1 December

  Security Notes: Payments in the Cloud

  

  I have found out that many payments professionals, who claim to use and comprehend the cloud, view it simply as a remote repository of accounts. So this month I have decided to dedicate this column to one purpose: elucidating this remarkable technology as a service to my readers. Early in …
• 1 December

  A Startup Player Wants To Be the Common OS for Smart Terminals

  

  Poynt Co., a startup supplier of intelligent payment devices, argues so-called smart terminals should have a common operating system like smart phones do. And in the course of announcing a $100-million funding round last month, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company also argued it should be the one to provide that …