November, 2020

• 2 November

  Payments 3.0: The 2020 Election And Payments

  

  As of mid-October, Joe Biden is heavily favored to win the presidential election and the Democrats are likely to take control of both houses of Congress. If the current trajectory plays out (let’s pause for a moment and recognize that anything could happen), the payments world will find itself in …
• 2 November

  Security Notes: Should You Worry About Quantum?

  

  Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported that Visa and JPMorgan Chase are gearing up to face the threat of quantum. Indeed, the drumbeat is getting louder. A new class of computing machines is coming down the pike, and much as present-day computers upended the payment industry, so will the …
• 2 November

  Is FedNow Moving Fast Enough?

  

  The announcement from the Federal Reserve last month of a pilot for the FedNow real-time payments service may represent an important stage in the development of a service not expected to go live until 2023 at the earliest. But observers caution rival services have already made headway with key market …

October, 2020

• 1 October

  Payments 3.0: Will Contactless Be A Covid-Driven Fad?

  

  It seems obvious that Covid-19 would lead to an increase in the adoption of contactless payments, and it has. But this still may not be the tipping point for tap-and-pay transactions. Contactless payments are a two-sided coin. They require both consumers and merchants to adopt them, so a variety of …
• 1 October

  Security Notes: Digital Transactions Without the Internet

  

  “When the Internet fades, payment dies. Alas, society runs on payment. And payment continuity is a must.” Central banks around the world recognize this very challenge, and search for answers. The importance of this topic was recently recognized in the International Conference IEMTRONICS held in British Columbia Canada, where it …
• 1 October

  Scraping Away Old Ways

  

  The data networks that connect payments and other financial apps to users’ bank accounts are scrambling to standardize data access by moving to application programming interfaces and away from an older, cruder form of access known in the business as “screen scraping.” The effort comes as financial apps gain popularity …

September, 2020

• 1 September

  Payments 3.0: Will Covid’s Impact Last?

  

  Covid-19 has changed shopping and payments behavior, and a big question facing the industry is: How long will those changes last? Most conversations about the pandemic start with, “When things get back to normal.” But all signs point to a new normal rather than a return to a pre-pandemic state. …
• 1 September

  Security Notes: A Base for Bottom-Up Capitalism

  

  Most of us will opt to pay a higher price at Amazon, which already holds our financial and private data, rather than pay less and expose our data to a merchant with unknown security practices. The net result is that the megastores keep getting bigger, and newcomers are stifled, however …
• 1 September

  PayPal Plots a New POS Course

  

  PayPal Holdings Inc. has made big plays for the physical point of sale before, but late in July the San Jose, Calif.-based company unveiled what could be its biggest strategy yet to capture transactions at the cash register. Top executives said an arrangement under way with CVS Pharmacy to run …

July, 2020

• 1 July

  Payments 3.0: Cash Isn’t Ready to Cash Out

  

  How often have you used cash in the last three months? If you are like many people, the answer is not much. For me, the answer is twice, but more about that in a minute. With the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping across the world, shoppers and merchants changed their habits as …