Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
A form of near-field communication that does not require a secure element to complete a mobile payment now has the formal backing of card brands MasterCard Inc. and Visa Inc. Each of them announced today their respective contactless payment schemes support so-called host card emulation. Host card emulation got a …
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As Key Chip Deadline Looms, Doubts Emerge About Small Merchants’ Readiness
With Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. digging in their heels on a key chip card deadline, payments executives are expressing doubts that all U.S. small businesses will be ready. “The short answer is no,” says Henry Helgeson, chief executive of Merchant Warehouse, a Boston-based merchant processor. “We still have a …
Read More »As EMV Comes to the U.S. Market, Canada’s NBS Buys Terminal Maker Equinox
Equinox Payments LLC has a new owner. In a bid to strengthen its hand in the market for EMV gear in the United States, NBS Payment Solutions Inc. announced late Thursday it bought the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based payment-terminal maker for an undisclosed amount from the private-equity investment firm Gores Group LLC. …
Read More »Contactless Payment Scheme Enables Consumers to Fill Up on Fuel and Loyalty Points
A new contactless payment scheme available from On Track Innovations Ltd. enables consumers to pay for fuel at the pump without removing their payment card from their wallets. n Currently, EasyFuel Plus is available in Europe and other international locations. OTI says plans to market it in the United States …
Read More »Chip Standards Body Fast-Tracks New Token Standard in Wake of Target, Other Recent Breaches
EMVCo., the international standards body for chip cards based on the EMV specification, is fast-tracking a specification for card-number tokenization in the wake of recently disclosed data breaches at major retailers, including the theft of card and other information on 110 million customers of Target Corp. The chip card organization …
Read More »Small-Merchant PCI Compliance Is on the Rise, Acquirer Survey Shows
Close to 60% of ISOs and other processors are reporting compliance rates of 40% or better among their portfolios of so-called Level 4 merchants, up about five percentage points from a year ago, according to a survey released by Atlanta-based security-solutions vendor ControlScan Inc. and the Merchant Acquirers’ Committee, a …
Read More »Target Passed a PCI Inspection Before Breach; Will Spend $100 Million on Chip Card Effort
Target Corp. said on Tuesday that it passed its latest Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) inspection a mere three months before confirming in December that a data breach compromised 40 million customers’ payment card numbers. Target also said it is fast-tracking its efforts to roll out chip card acceptance …
Read More »The Gimlet Eye: How To Make Real Payments Progress
As you’ve no doubt noticed, the huge data breach at Target Corp. has triggered an equally impressive avalanche of commentary about whether the baneful effects of such crimes might have been mitigated had Target, and the rest of the country, converted to EMV by now. The presumption here is that, …
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Plastic: High Growth, High Risk More than ever, plastic dominates the business of electronic payments in the United States, with two-thirds of all noncash transactions in 2012 occurring on a card, up substantially from 60% just three years earlier. That’s according to the Federal Reserve System’s triennial payments study, released …
Read More »Components: EMV: Has Its Day Come?
Jim Daly It’s been two-and-a-half years since a Visa plan marked the unofficial start of the conversion of U.S. card payments to the EMV chip card standard. Will recent data breaches speed up the conversion’s snail’s pace? While still a Congressman, current Chicago mayor and former White House chief of …
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