Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
It may be called artificial intelligence, but the potential this technology opens up for payments and banking is turning out to be very real. Earlier this week, yet another major messaging platform agreed to support chatbots that would let its users transfer funds, check their bank balances, and perform other …
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A New App Lets Supermarkets Get in on the Trend Toward E-Commerce in the Store
Few consumers like waiting in lines to pay, especially at grocery stores. One California grocery chain is taking steps to make it easier for shoppers pay for their purchases with the launch of a self-checkout app. The California Fresh Market location in San Luis Opisbo, Calif., is using Future Proof …
Read More »Holiday Spending Grows 5.8% and other Digital Transactions News briefs
• In a study of more than 900,000 merchants, processor First Data Corp. says retail spending from Thanksgiving through CyberMonday (Nov. 28) grew 5.8% from year-earlier levels; brick-and-mortar retailers saw spending grow 4.1% while e-commerce spending jumped 14.3%. • European software firm Comtrade Digital Services has built an automated banking platform for the Viber messaging app, …
Read More »The Fed Leaves Durbin Cap Unchanged Despite Ongoing Drop in Issuers’ Debit Card Costs
The Federal Reserve will leave the current interchange cap on debit card transactions in place, the agency announced this week as part of its biennial review of the regulation formally known as Regulation II, but commonly called the Durbin Amendment. The Fed’s controversial rule implementing the amendment in 2011 imposed …
Read More »The NRF Predicts Holiday Gift Card Spending Will Rise 6% This Year
The National Retail Federation predicts consumers will spend $27.5 billion on gift cards this holiday season, up 5.8% from $26 billion in 2015. The increase follows the 18% plunge last year from $31.7 billion in 2014, which was the highest gift card spending total in at least seven years on NRF surveys. …
Read More »Visa, MasterCard Postpone 2017 Fuel-Pump EMV Liability Shifts for Three Years
Citing the difficulties that gas stations are having in retrofitting fuel pumps to accept EMV chip cards, Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. are postponing their Oct. 1, 2017, EMV liability shift for U.S. automated fuel dispensers (AFDs) until Oct. 1, 2020. Visa announced the postponement in a blog posting early Thursday. The …
Read More »How Fragile?
The ever-expanding Internet of Things could represent a back-to-the-future security nightmare for the payments industry. What’s a network without endpoints? Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. have big networks—about 8 million endpoints in the form of merchant locations that include point-of-sale terminals in the U.S. alone. But the Internet of Things, …
Read More »Finding the Right Word
Going too deep into the payments thicket could be a sales killer. Smart agents know when, and how, to explain certain terms. Want a sure way to stunt a sale, perhaps even ensure it can’t be closed? Start talking about payments. Yes, start throwing around the key words and phrases …
Read More »Visa’s QIR Mandate: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?
The new year will be ringing in with questions about Visa’s plan to improve the data-security work that third parties do on small merchants’ point-of-sale systems. What happens when a payment-security requirement isn’t enforced and is largely ignored by vast numbers of the industry participants it covers? We’re about to …
Read More »Who’s Afraid of Amazon?
If you’re not, and you’re a retailer with physical stores, you should be. But there’s a way to fight back. Proprietary mobile apps show the way. Amazon.com Inc. is on a tear. Reports show the online retailer accounted for 24 cents of every $1 in retail sales growth in 2015, …
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