By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews Not thoroughly knowing merchants and submerchants harbors peril for payment facilitators, and that’s one risk the Electronic Transactions Association hopes to alleviate. The ETA, a Washington-based trade group representing the merchant-acquiring industry, expects to release a set of underwriting guidelines for payment facilitators soon. According to Visa …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews The payments industry’s efforts to protect sensitive cardholder data and transactions are moves in the right direction. They’ll have to be, because solutions to the epidemic of data breaches and online fraud are going to have to come from the private sector and from consumers’ own precautions. …

Courting and retaining high-risk merchants can yield high returns. But it’s a lot of work. It’s no simple task, but one that can yield enviable returns. Finding the profit in high-risk merchants requires diligence, a knack for customer service, and a commitment to thoroughness. It also requires deep knowledge of …

Acquirers and financial institutions can put consumer and merchant affinity for smart phones to work for them when trying to comply with anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer regulations. Smart-phone activity, whether it’s purchasing behavior, location habits, or personally identifiable information associated with the wireless carrier account, can be used to vet the …

By Steve Norell I started in the acquiring industry approximately 20 years ago, and during those 20 years have seen and heard just about everything one can imagine about the way our products and services are marketed. That’s especially true when it comes to deceptive and fraudulent practices. During those …

Linda Punch The Federal Trade Commission wants to outright ban four payment methods used by legitimate telemarketers and fraudsters alike. That would shut off a significant source of transactions for at least some merchant processors. Alternative payment methods such as remotely created checks have become increasingly popular over the past …

Government authorities are demanding better merchant underwriting and transaction monitoring by payment processors in order to prevent consumer fraud. A laudable goal, but at what cost? by Jim Daly Almost two years ago, a Federal Trade Commission official made it known to a meeting of merchant-acquiring executives that their industry …

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Data Insecurity Part 3 For as long as we've had threats to transacting online, there's been a data-security industry poised with a vast array of solutions to protect us, anxiously awaiting evidence of a compelling business case to get things started. But for just as long, it's been axiomatic that …

10 Tipping Points for the Payments Industry Part 10 Years and years of finger-crossing while pushing ever-more unprotected financial account data across an expanding array of vulnerable origination points and networks have come to a sudden and long overdue demise. When and how the electronic payments industry finally gets serious …