November, 2024

• 1 November

  Payments 3.0: For AI, Have a Strategy First

  

  Success with artificial intelligence is about strategy, but most conversations about AI today focus on tactics. Although financial services have used AI for decades, the growth of generative AI has led to a broader set of use cases. Innovators are looking for ways to apply artificial intelligence to everything from …
• 1 November

  How Illinois’s Interchange Case Has Transfixed the Industry

  

  Plaintiffs in a lawsuit seeking to overturn the Illinois Interchange Fee Prohibition Act filed motions last month requesting the court deny a request from several merchant organizations to join the Illinois Attorney General as defendants in the suit. The case, which involves a recent Illinois law that prohibits interchange on …

October, 2024

• 1 October

  Payments 3.0: Humanity And the War on Gift Card Fraud

  

  One morning, I was checking out at a grocery store when I saw the store manager rush out of her office. “Who has the big gift card purchase?” she asked, hurrying down the row of cash registers. She had gotten a call alerting her to a fraudulent transaction and asking …
• 1 October

  Security Notes: Where Money Goes, Attention Flows

  

  Money is traditionally defined as a medium of exchange, unit of measurement, and store of value, which is true. But this definition hides the underlying attribute of currency. Money, currency, is the riverbed that guides where the river flows. Where money goes, attention flows. Society moves forward by paying attention …
• 1 October

  The CFPB Reviews Cash Back at the Point of Sale

  

  Retailers providing cash-back services at the point of sale fill a void for many consumers who may live in so-called banking deserts, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says in a recent report on the service. Some, however, charge a fee for that access, among other banking hurdles. The Cash-back Fees …

September, 2024

• 1 September

  Payments 3.0: Cool Off And Reconsider

  

  The payments industry seems to be gearing up for more lawsuits in the wake of a recent Supreme Court decision, but cooler heads should prevail. In June, the Court issued a decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, Secretary of Commerce, that overtuned the Chevron Doctrine. In 1984, the Court …
• 1 September

  Security Notes: Payment Tech And the Migrant Crisis

  

  The United States has admitted close to 20 million migrants just since 2020. Most are penniless, and receive payment cards to enjoy a dinner and a pillow. But abuse is rampant, crime is spreading, and the government is losing control. Migrants are a global problem affecting all developed countries. Human …
• 1 September

  Processing Fees Are the Cost Merchants Should Fight, Some Say

  

  Merchants’ disdain for interchange is well documented, but one aspect of card-acceptance costs that gets drowned out by the outcry over interchange is that rising processing fees are hitting merchants harder than interchange hikes, according to some observers. Processors’ rate hikes have been running between 0.25% and 1.5% in recent …

July, 2024

• 1 July

  Security Notes: Payments in the Age of AI

  

  Just before his early death in 1957, John von Neumann designed a self-reproducing automata. The brightest mathematician of the 20th century, von Neuman realized the implications of his design and attempted to hide it from the public. A self-reproducing entity can spawn “children” entities (copies) marked by random mutations that …
• 1 July

  Payments 3.0: Can Fintechs Control Their Destiny?

  

  A new regulatory framework is coming to fintech. While none of the regulators has proposed a new rule yet, my prediction is that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will create a new regulation that will apply directly to fintechs. This will be done to address concerns that come from relying …