January, 2017

• 1 January

  Next Up: Cognitive Payments

  

  From the early days of artificial intelligence in banking, back in the 1980s, we have come to where today’s cognitive technology is going to have a transforming impact on payments. Major changes in technology always create opportunities to rethink operations and strategy. The more radically different the technology, the greater …
• 1 January

  Innovation And Regulation

  

  A rush of excitement is rippling through the coffee shops on K Street in downtown Washington, D.C., fueled by a once-in-eight years chance to rewrite financial regulations to protect the public without choking off financial pioneers. A lot has been written about how fractured and unresponsive the present regulations are, …
• 1 January

  Why Visa And Mastercard Are Playing Ball on Tokens

  

  Since 2014, Visa Inc. has been tokenizing Visa-branded payment cards and Mastercard Inc. has been tokenizing Mastercard-branded cards, but neither network has had access to tokens for cards branded by the other network. Now, that’s about to change. Under an agreement announced last month by Visa and Mastercard, Visa will …

December, 2016

• 1 December

  Digital Money And the IoT

  

  Payments power our society. Fair payment for goods and services is the mechanism that allows for the division of labor and the operation of a modern community. But what happens when payment is not fair? Commerce is choked by overpricing, while underpricing sends the seller to compensate himself in alternative …
• 1 December

  Year End Round-Up

  

  Fintech—Patti Hewitt, a.k.a. Paymentgal, observes that financial institutions need to reinvent the retail account to offer more than just the simple liquidity they’ve provided “for centuries.” She sees the bank-customer relationship itself as up for grabs. The reason is the rise of fintech, well-funded non-bank financial-services startups with deep technology …
• 1 December

  Routing Wars Draw in the Fed And the FTC

  

  The wrangling over debit card transaction routing heated up last month as Visa Inc. disclosed the Federal Trade Commission is investigating the network’s EMV routing practices. And the Federal Reserve earlier in November posted guidance about EMV debit routing that, according to eight retailer trade groups, was issued in response …
• 1 December

  Want To Work With an ISV? Plenty Still Don’t Integrate Payments

  

  Even though independent software vendors (ISVs) have been working with payments processors for years, the developers still represent a major opportunity for acquirers and processors. That’s because 49% of ISVs do not integrate payments functionality into their systems, according to new research from First Annapolis Consulting, an Annapolis, Md.-based payments-advisory …
• 1 December

  Mobile POS Is Growing Fast, But Not As Fast As Mobile P2P

  

  More U.S consumers are using mobile peer-to-peer payments than are using a smart phone to make a point-of-sale purchase, according to research firm eMarketer Inc. While only 19.4% of consumers made a mobile payment in a store in the preceding six months, 24.9% have made a mobile P2P payment, the …
• 1 December

  A New, Improved 3-D Secure Debuts

  

  It’s Round 2 for the online-authentication technology known as 3-D Secure, and security experts say it stands a good chance of being more popular than the original version. EMVCo, the chip card standards body owned by the world’s six leading payment card networks, released 3-D Secure 2.0 in late October. …

November, 2016

• 1 November

  A Celebration of Randomness

  

  You can’t define it, really. You can’t identify it when you see it. It’s easily faked, and it looks totally useless. Yet, randomness is rising to become the most valuable resource in the unending cyber war. Crude oil extracted from the ground was used for light, heat, and pavement. But …