As the U.S. payment card industry continues its monumental shift to EMV chip card technology, one group of merchants will lag. More than 70% of small merchants will not be EMV compliant by Oct. 1, the date the card networks have set to shift liability for point-of-sale fraud to …
Read More »Microsoft’s Payments Gambit Baffles Some, But Others See Hidden Potential
Microsoft Corp. may bring impressive technical chops as it enters the mobile-payments race, but if ever there were a David up against Goliaths, it’s now the Redmond, Wash.-based computing giant. News broke last week that Microsoft has used a company called Microsoft Payments Inc. to apply for money-transmission licenses with …
Read More »Eye on Prepaid: Fees Vary Widely, and Millennials More Apt To Favor Prepaid Cards
Prepaid cards may find favor among younger consumers, one survey finds, while another reports prepaid card programs sport a wide range of fees. Also, armored-car company Brink’s has jumped into the prepaid card mix. Fees on 31 prepaid card programs surveyed by Bankrate.com are scattershot, with the types and amounts …
Read More »The PCI Council Publishes Tokenization Guidance and Looks Forward to EMV
By Jim Daly With the U.S. payment card industry’s eyes glued on the coming of EMV chip cards, the main standards body for card security is trying to remind merchant acquirers, merchants, and card issuers that there is more to security than simply embedding a chip into a piece of …
Read More »Heartland Payment Systems’ CEO Blasts Indiana Religious-Freedom Law
By Jim Daly Merchant processor Heartland Payment Systems Inc.’s outspoken chief executive Bob Carr weighed in Friday with a statement on Indiana’s controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Carr says the law could relegate some people to “second-class status” and is an “invitation to discriminate.” “It is deeply troubling that the …
Read More »Eye on Acquiring: EMV Chip Card Acceptance on the Mind
As Transact 15, the Electronic Transactions Association’s annual conference held this year in San Francisco gets under way, acquiring industry vendors and companies are releasing a bevy of news. Among the vendors making announcements is Clearent LLC, a payment-services company based in Clayton, Mo. Clearent says it will resell CardFlight …
Read More »Consumers Want to Use Apple Pay, But Find Merchant Acceptance Lacking: Survey
It’s a familiar refrain in payments: For consumers to use a payment method there has to be places to use it. Apple Pay, it seems even with all of the hoopla surrounding it, is no different. That’s what a recent report from Phoenix Marketing International, a Rhineback, N.Y.-based firm, …
Read More »PayPal Will Include NFC Capability in the Coming Version of Its Mobile Wallet
After long belittling near-field communication technology by joking that its acronym, NFC, stands for “Not for Commerce,” PayPal Inc. before the end of the year will launch a new version of its mobile wallet featuring the technology. PayPal, which has been working with NFC in Australia, will replace its current …
Read More »Eye on Mobile: Mobile Devices Becoming More of a Retailer Ally in Authenticating Online Consumers
Smart phones may become a strong ally to fraud-plagued e-commerce merchants in helping to verify the location and identity of an online shopper. Online fraud is often committed by criminals who manipulate their computer’s location data and other attributes to make it appear they are who they say they …
Read More »Acculynk’s Mobile Update Brings PIN Authentication to Online EMV Purchases
Merchants looking for a way to secure e-commerce and mobile-commerce transactions made with credit and debit cards have a new option with the debut of an update to Acculynk Inc.’s PaySecure service. The Acculynk technology allows consumers to make PIN-based transactions on their PCs and mobile devices. The Atlanta-based …
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