Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Prepaid card services provider Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. disclosed Wednesday that it plans to sell its struggling Cardpool business. That news came as Pleasanton, Calif.-based Blackhawk reported a loss of $7.8 million for its third quarter ended Sept. 9, bigger than the $5.1 million loss in 2016’s third quarter. Third-quarter …
October, 2017
May, 2017
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1 May
The IoT Challenge: Securing Devices Without Impeding Usage
With a forecast of 15 billion new devices as part of the Internet of Things potentially coming online as payments devices by 2021, securing these devices, whether they are cars, wearables, or appliances, is emerging as a top concern. “We are seeing a huge increase in inadequately protected devices,” Graeme …
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1 May
Chuck Your Password
“What?!” That’s the mildest reaction I get from my clients when I dispense the advice encapsulated in the title of this month’s column. “A password I remember I don’t need to write down, so it cannot be pilfered,” says the incredulous client. “Not so,” I reply, and people are not …
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1 May
Should Fintech Be Regulated?
If you want to see a rowdy debate, try gathering a group of colleagues and posing the question of whether or not fintech companies should be regulated. In posing this question to several groups of payments professionals, I have observed that the same arguments, pro and con, keep coming up. …
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1 May
Ninth Annual Field Guide to Alternative Payments
The increasing commercialization of mobile payments is showing up in a proliferation of so-called Pays from a bevy of banks, tech companies, and merchants. Time was, a cutting-edge alternative-payment service involved entering card or bank-account details into a branded interface on a laptop computer. Mobile payments were nascent, held back …
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1 May
Surcharging Ahead
Merchants like programs that cover their credit card acceptance costs. So do ISOs and acquirers, some of which see a big opportunity in programs that help merchants with surcharging. Surcharging for credit card transactions or offering a cash discount may have obvious benefits for merchants, but these programs also carry …
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1 May
Why the Secret Sauce Isn’t So Secret Any More
With the rise of APIs and the race for consumer loyalty, payments players are under pressure to innovate as never before. The result? A new openness to outside developers. If anything in the payments business can be said to approximate a company’s crown jewels, it’s the code that controls, uniquely …
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1 May
Nonstop Upgrades
The ATM EMV conversion is only partly done, and now deployers are beginning preparations for Windows 10 only a few years after upgrading to Windows 7. ATM deployers can take solace in the fact that their EMV upgrades are going faster than merchants’ conversion to chip card acceptance. But lest …
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1 May
Chip Cards Aren’t on the Menu
Restaurants have been slow to bite on EMV. To get adoption percolating, vendors are introducing methods that let customers add a tip after making a payment or pay with tabletop devices. Paying with EMV cards has been an adjustment for the average U.S. consumer. Cards are no longer swiped. They …
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1 May
Why Big Banks Shouldn’t Own the Road to Faster Payments
The same U.S. banks that have retarded progress in digital payments shouldn’t be entrusted with anything approaching a monopoly on implementing real-time payments systems, says Mark Horwedel. Lately, the Federal Reserve Board has been shepherding a cross-industry effort to build a faster, more efficient, and more secure payments system in …
