October, 2023

• 1 October

  Payments 3.0: How to Manage Generative AI

  

  Juliet Capulet sent me an e-mail recently to offer me a marketing list for a conference that has nothing to do with payments. I’m no gentleman of Verona, but I definitely recognize the Capulet name. However, I don’t think Juliet is real. The e-mail’s stilted wording, the mismatch of the …
• 1 October

  Security Notes: The Cyber Ocean And the Chemistry Beach

  

  There are many ways to protect against a shark attack: certain wet suits, defensive tools, evasive behavior, and so on. Sometimes they help, other times they don’t. What never fails is to walk on the beach. Safety guaranteed. Same for the cyber ocean. If you walk on its beach, known …

September, 2023

• 1 September

  Block Squares off Against Mastercard And Visa

  

  In a major case whose effects could ripple widely across the payments industry, Block Inc. this summer sued Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc., alleging the global networks worked together to fix interchange fees paid by Block’s Square operation. Square, which processes card transactions for millions of mostly small sellers, pays …
• 1 September

  Security Notes: AI, Mis-Profiling, And a Call to Action

  

  Artificial intelligence is profoundly impactful from a payment point of view, probably much more so than we can tell now. What we already foresee is part helpful, part alarming. I will dedicate this column to a particular threat: mis-profiling. Google’s AlphaZero AI machine taught itself to play chess by playing …
• 1 September

  Payments 3.0: Five Questions to Ask About AI

  

  ChatGPT has brought artificial intelligence into the mainstream, leading to predictions of everything from the end of work to the end of the world. While these predictions lead to great headlines, the reality is that financial-services providers already use AI for things like chatbots and fraud detection. But as this …

July, 2023

• 1 July

  Merchants Will Reap $15 Billion From the CCCA, Says One Researcher

  

  As proponents and adversaries wrangle over the newly resurrected Credit Card Competition Act, a market-research firm has raised by more than one-third its estimate of how much the bill could save U.S. merchants. A year ago, the firm, Atlanta-based CMS Payments Intelligence Inc., calculated the bill would result in $11 …
• 1 July

  Payments 3.0: How Funds Are Really Protected

  

  In June, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a Consumer Advisory and Issue Brief warning users of payment apps like PayPal, Venmo, and Cash App that their money might not be covered by FDIC deposit insurance. The problem with this approach is that it might actually increase the risk for …
• 1 July

  Security Notes: The New Age of Security

  

  Technology shifts responsibilities to us, the people. Not long ago we called a travel agent to book a flight. We stood in line at the bank, to get the teller to move some funds. Today more of us store money in a phone, and rely on reputable ciphers to do …

June, 2023

• 1 June

  Payments 3.0: Get the Fundamentals Right

  

  The lesson innovators need to learn from recent industry turbulence is that fundamentals still matter. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the consent order against Cross River Bank, and other recent events show that companies and regulators must focus on business basics. It is tempting to say SVB’s failure is …
• 1 June

  Wall Street’s Evil Eye for PayPal

  

  PayPal Holdings Inc. has been known for some time as a major alternative for checkout online, but now the company is making it plain it’s putting considerable resources behind checkouts where its services function entirely in the background. So-called unbranded checkout, led by the company’s Braintree processing platform along with …