Retailers, especially larger ones, face a contradiction: they know they need to update their point-of-sale systems to take advantage of new technologies and consumer-shopping behavior, yet most resist that urge because of the expense. That’s one of the findings from “Commerce Convergence: Closing the Gap Between Online and In-Store,” a …

You may have heard the term, “friendly fraud.” It’s no surprise, then, that there’s nothing friendly about it. And it’s quickly becoming a major problem for merchants across the globe. Friendly fraud, also called friendly-fraud chargebacks or cyber-shoplifting, occurs when a customer makes a purchase online and then files a …

The PCI Security Standards Council this week updated its standards governing point-to-point data encryption (P2PE) and card-reading devices for the point of sale, ATMs, kiosks and mobile devices. One of the key changes in the new Version 2.0 of the P2PE standard will make it easier for security-solutions providers to …

Some of the nation’s major PIN-debit networks over the past couple of years have quietly instituted so-called participation fees that are assessed for each merchant location in the network. The fees’ progenitor, says a veteran market observer, is Visa Inc.’s Fixed Acquirer Network Fee (FANF), which Visa instituted in 2012. …

Merchant attrition in the acquiring business fell to 21% in 2014, down from 22% in 2013. That may not sound like much, but in this business, where merchant processors and independent sales organizations struggle to replace each defecting client, it’s significant. The numbers come from a report released last month …

Point-of-sale payment card fraud will be easing off, thanks largely to the introduction of EMV chip card payments to the U.S. in the next few years. But fraudsters, according to a new report from Javelin Strategy & Research, will be back in stores armed with cards using stolen credentials from …

Should transactions be free? Dwolla Inc. thinks so. The processor last month eliminated its 25-cent transaction fee, effective on all transactions types. The fee, which had applied to transaction values exceeding $10, was typically paid by the receiver of the money. Des Moines, Iowa-based Dwolla processes person-to-person payments as well …

Security Notes Let’s begin with a statement that contradicts most texts on the subject: Tokenization is a form of encryption. Encryption is a process wherein a piece of data is replaced with a different piece of data so that only the intended reader will be able to reverse the process …

  Mobile POS devices may not displace entirely the traditional countertop POS terminal, but they could come close. It emerged six years ago among the smallest of merchants and had only one function: accepting credit and debit card transactions. But now the mobile point-of-sale device and its attendant software have …

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 …