Merchants contend with fraud all the time, but the 2015 edition of the LexisNexis True Cost of Fraud study has found that their fraud costs are tallying 1.32% of revenue in 2015, a whopping 94% increase from the 0.68% rate in 2014. All categories of merchants in the LexisNexis Risk …

Every U.S. EMV chip card will have a backup magnetic stripe. That ensures widespread acceptance but can present risks. As EMV chip card payments finally take hold in the United States, an issue certain to show up on the payment industry’s radar is fallback. That’s when the customer inserts an …

Big Data is all very well, but when it comes to automated underwriting for merchant funding, the key is to know which data streams to include and which to ignore, says David Rubin. We believe that not every Internet itch that a merchant scratches is germane to the ability or …

Payments 3.0 One thing about the future of payments is assured: The flood of new payments-system ideas won’t slow. This is due to the convergence of four developments in the payments ecology: 1. Software-development tech­nology that allows anyone to code a new payments system; 2. The ability of apps to …

Components Biometrics in electronic payments didn’t have much life until last year, when Apple’s Touch ID and other applications gave the technology a shot of adrenaline. What’s next? It’s Act II for biometrics in payments. The now-defunct Solidus Networks Inc., better known as Pay By Touch, dominated Act I for …

Non-bank acquirers are increasingly looking to foreign markets for growth and profits. Some are thriving, but others would be better advised to stay home. The North American acquiring market may have been more challenging at one time or another than it is these days, but if so few independent sales …

Stressing such factors as the rapid growth of mobile commerce and the advantages of streamlined integration, representatives from Discover Financial Services, Mercury Payment Systems LLC, and PayPal Inc. on Tuesday urged a roomful of point-of-sale technology resellers to begin moving quickly on selling mobile payments to retail clients. “I would …

The PCI Security Standards Council has placed Trustwave Holdings Inc.’s business of assessing payment-processing software for compliance with a major security standard “in remediation,” an official term that means probation. Chicago-based Trustwave is one of the biggest firms, if not the biggest, in the business of assessing merchants and processors …

Jim Daly For a time, it seemed like open-fare contactless smart cards might take over payments on America’s buses, subways, and commuter trains, but then along came smart phones and EMV. The only thing that moves slower than a bus stuck in a 5:00 p.m. traffic jam is the process …

Richard Crone and Heidi Liebenguth To ward off third-party interlopers, billers must understand their bill is their brand. That means seizing the unprecedented opportunity that lies in mobile apps. Remember the bad old days of online-banking bill pay? Billers were forced to accept bulk payments in the form of so-called …