November, 2023

• 1 November

  Goldman Faces Some Hard Decisions in Credit Cards

  

  The pressure at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to exit, or at least radically modify, its consumer-credit and payments businesses has been mounting and may have hit its summit. At least some executives at the company are pushing senior management to exit credit card deals with Apple Inc. and General Motors …

October, 2023

• 1 October

  Parking Is the First Stop for Hyundai Pay

  

  Step one for Hyundai Pay, the in-car payment service debuting in the 2024 Kona crossover, is enabling payments for parking while sitting in the driver’s seat. Step two is broadening its capabilities and making it an integral part of the vehicle, says Olabisi Boyle, Hyundai Motor North America’s vice president …
• 1 October

  Payments 3.0: How to Manage Generative AI

  

  Juliet Capulet sent me an e-mail recently to offer me a marketing list for a conference that has nothing to do with payments. I’m no gentleman of Verona, but I definitely recognize the Capulet name. However, I don’t think Juliet is real. The e-mail’s stilted wording, the mismatch of the …
• 1 October

  Security Notes: The Cyber Ocean And the Chemistry Beach

  

  There are many ways to protect against a shark attack: certain wet suits, defensive tools, evasive behavior, and so on. Sometimes they help, other times they don’t. What never fails is to walk on the beach. Safety guaranteed. Same for the cyber ocean. If you walk on its beach, known …

September, 2023

• 1 September

  Block Squares off Against Mastercard And Visa

  

  In a major case whose effects could ripple widely across the payments industry, Block Inc. this summer sued Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc., alleging the global networks worked together to fix interchange fees paid by Block’s Square operation. Square, which processes card transactions for millions of mostly small sellers, pays …
• 1 September

  Security Notes: AI, Mis-Profiling, And a Call to Action

  

  Artificial intelligence is profoundly impactful from a payment point of view, probably much more so than we can tell now. What we already foresee is part helpful, part alarming. I will dedicate this column to a particular threat: mis-profiling. Google’s AlphaZero AI machine taught itself to play chess by playing …
• 1 September

  Payments 3.0: Five Questions to Ask About AI

  

  ChatGPT has brought artificial intelligence into the mainstream, leading to predictions of everything from the end of work to the end of the world. While these predictions lead to great headlines, the reality is that financial-services providers already use AI for things like chatbots and fraud detection. But as this …

July, 2023

• 1 July

  Merchants Will Reap $15 Billion From the CCCA, Says One Researcher

  

  As proponents and adversaries wrangle over the newly resurrected Credit Card Competition Act, a market-research firm has raised by more than one-third its estimate of how much the bill could save U.S. merchants. A year ago, the firm, Atlanta-based CMS Payments Intelligence Inc., calculated the bill would result in $11 …
• 1 July

  Payments 3.0: How Funds Are Really Protected

  

  In June, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a Consumer Advisory and Issue Brief warning users of payment apps like PayPal, Venmo, and Cash App that their money might not be covered by FDIC deposit insurance. The problem with this approach is that it might actually increase the risk for …
• 1 July

  Security Notes: The New Age of Security

  

  Technology shifts responsibilities to us, the people. Not long ago we called a travel agent to book a flight. We stood in line at the bank, to get the teller to move some funds. Today more of us store money in a phone, and rely on reputable ciphers to do …