Transaction Processing

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

The global chip card standard known as EMV became a reality for U.S merchants, acquirers, and issuers in October 2015. That’s when the liability for counterfeit card transactions at the point of sale shifted, by network rules, from issuers to merchants if the merchants weren’t prepared to accept EMV cards. …

Consulting firm The Strawhecker Group is out with its 2016 rankings of U.S. merchant acquirers, and they show that 240 acquirers and independent sales organizations processed more than $5 trillion in payment volume. The 10 biggest acquirers accounted for 80% of that volume. Topping the list is JPMorgan Chase & …

The subject of faster payments has been in the news almost continually for months now, but apparently awareness of the subject, and in some cases adoption, remains lower than expected among the financial institutions that will be depended on to implement speedier settlement. That’s if survey results released in April …

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 …

“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 …

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. …