Mobile payment processing is getting heated competition as priority in the electronic payment industry begins to shift. Retailers and restaurants are switching to cheaper solutions like smartphones and tablets linked to a mobile point of sale system or MPOS. These MPOS applications have devices that connect to a smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth wireless interfaces or through a standard headphone jack on the device. Read more of this article »
John Stewart January 17, 2022 https://www.digitaltransactions.net/trends-like-open-banking-and-bnpl-will-sustain-e-commerces-hot-streak-a-report-says/
Open banking, single-click checkout wallets, and the hot buy now, pay later trend will all help drive e-commerce volume worldwide in the coming five years, predicts Juniper Research in a report released Monday. This momentum is likely to push online sales long after the short-term impetus from the pandemic subsides, Juniper says.
E-commerce volume totaled $4.9 trillion globally in 2021, a figure the United Kingdom-based research firm forecasts will reach $7.5 trillion in 2026, when China will control a 37% share. Wider availability of multiple e-commerce channels, including mobile devices, will propel the overall growth worldwide, Juniper says. But along with the boom in e-commerce will come a corresponding growth in fraud via identity theft, account takeovers, and fraudulent chargebacks, the report warns. China, for example, will account for more than 40% of fraud losses worldwide in 2025, at more than $12 billion, Juniper forecasts.
Open banking is a trend by which fintechs can verify balances in consumers’ accounts and transfer funds to pay for online purchases. As standards bodies work to promulgate standards for this business, e-commerce payment providers “should … partner with specialists in … specific emerging payment areas to keep pace with changing merchant expectations around acceptance types,” the research firm says in its release, referring to digital wallets and crypto as well as open banking.
Open banking has taken on a higher profile in the global payments market with efforts by both of the global card networks to acquire firms that specialize in this area. Visa Inc. has acquired Tink AB, while Mastercard Inc. bought Aiia and Finicity Corp.
Physical goods will continue to dominate e-commerce spending, the report says, accounting for 82% of payment value by 2026. To tap into the trend, Juniper advises, payments providers should support buy now, pay later plans, which allow consumers to split purchases into four equal installments paid over a six-week period at no interest. BNPL is becoming more controversial, however, as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has launched an investigation of the option and as reports emerge that consumers with multiple accounts are more likely to miss a payment.
While still a big trend, e-commerce sales in the U.S. market cooled significantly last year as the pandemic effect lost some of its force. Third-quarter sales in 2021 reached $214.6 billion, up 6.6% year-over-year, according to the Census Bureau, which tracks retail sales. That follows an 8.9% rise in the second quarter and three straight quarters with increases of 32% or more. Fourth-quarter 2021 results are not yet available.
Customer satisfaction. The holy grail of commerce whether it be an e-commerce shopping cart site, a brick and mortar store with cash registers or the latest m-commerce mobile point of sale with a mobile payment gateway. We’ve all been there before, you go into a store, make a few selections, and then the lines. Those long lines at the cash register are a retailers nightmare. So bad in fact, that retailers probably have no idea how many transactions are aborted due to heavy waits in a cashier lane.
MPOS or Mobile Point of Sale is the new technology that makes long waits in line a thing of the past. Online retailers with e-commerce payment gateways have given shoppers a sense of entitlement by removing the wait barrier. Now these consumers are seeing waits in cash register lines magnify as they become familiar with the more instant shopping cart and payment gateway process involved in shopping an online e-commerce site. Today the lines are blurring between an e-commerce website online and a mobile point of sale application capable of relaying inventory levels, product details and completing an order from selection to payment processing.
Square, PayPal and others have flocked to mobile point of sale users offering software that can run on a PC, a laptop, a smartphone or tablet. The incentive is capturing payment gateway transactions turning point of sale applications into a commodity. Several open source and free mobile point of sale applications already exist and there should be more activity in this field as transactions and amounts heat up. There are high expectations for point of sale transaction processing gateways and many merchant account service providers are going for any advantage they can procure. Merchants are now in the position of upgrading their traditional cash register based point of sale systems which were expensive and carried high credit card processing rates, with newer, more advanced mobile point of sale hardware and software that has far lower cost for entry. VARs are even leveraging the adoption costs by financing up-front costs in a Sales as a Service (SaaS). Sales as a Service bundles the costs of tablets, receipt printers and cash drawers as well as security and credit card processing fees into a single monthly fee.
When you are first setting up a retail or an eCommerce endeavor, few decisions will be of as much importance as the payment provider that you choose. Your payment provider will handle each and every card transaction your online company makes, and if it doesn’t function properly, or if it has a lot of hidden fees, such as old legacy systems with long term contracts, you can be setting your business up to fail before you ever get started.
So, we are going to explain to you what you should be looking for when you reach this crucial decision in the setup phase of your business, and we will help you find a payment provider that meets your needs perfectly and sets you up to succeed in the business world.
As a general rule of thumb, there are three main factors that you really need to consider when you go to choose who you will be working with: The people involved in the transaction, the fees associated with each transaction, and how the transaction is handled behind the scenes. There are some smaller tidbits that can make a specific provider a better or worse choice, but those three factors will allow you to narrow your search down to a select few of top competitors that will truly help your company succeed.
The Parties Involved
Besides your bank and the customer’s bank, there are three different factors that go into every single one of your transactions, and a payment provider works with all three of them. There’s you, your customer, and the technology acting as a bridge between the two of you. We’ll go into more detail about all that, now.
The Customer
With this part of the transaction, we are really talking about the “issuing bank”. That’s your customer’s bank, and they handle lending the customer the money to make a purchase on your site, and they issue the card that the customer uses to make that purchase. This is your customer’s main form of interaction with the transaction process, and it’s one of the most important factors since it’s what starts the transaction in the first place. However, you have no control over this factor, and you can simply ensure that the technology, which we’ll talk about soon, makes their part of the transaction as smooth as possible.
The Merchant
This is you and your part in the transaction. You function as the merchant that the customer is engaging with, and in order to do that, you need a merchant bank to partner with and work as your company’s bank. A merchant bank functions differently than the bank you use in your day to day life. Instead of issuing you funds in advance for credit purchases and managing your checking and savings accounts, a merchant bank takes in your customers’ payments for you, and then puts those payments into a special merchant account that is a lot like a business’s checking account. Without a merchant bank, you won’t be able to succeed in the long-term with eCommerce.
The Technology Solution
Your technology, and the company handling it, is what makes a transaction possible in the first place, and there are two parts to this imperative factor: The payment processor and the payment gateway.
Processor
The payment processor is what actually handles the transaction. It moves the money between the different parties and delivers it to the banks and accounts involved. If your processor is subpar, your customer’s transaction experience will be, too. You need an up-to-date payment processor that functions smoothly and without any hassle placed on you or your customer to ensure that each customer enjoys a seamless transaction.
Gateway
The payment gateway is essentially what sends the transaction information to the payment processor. It links to your site’s shopping cart feature, and when a customer buys something, it connects to the payment processor and begins the transaction. In order to ensure that your transactions are smooth and effortless, this technological asset needs to be competent and able to easily satisfy your customers without being apparent.
How the Transaction Process Happens
The transaction process is fairly complicated, but it all takes place in a matter of seconds. In fact, it’s usually seemingly instantaneous.
Once a purchase is made, the payment gateway encrypts the transaction data to protect your customer and your business, and then it asks the customer’s bank if it will advance the funds for the customer’s purchase. If yes, the payment will be sent to your merchant account, and if not, the transaction will be denied and ended until a resolution can be found.
Once that step is completed, the funds typically end up being accessible by you the second your merchant bank acquires them and places them in your account, but you may be forced to keep a certain amount in the account to make sure you can cover any returns that pop up.
This part is not instantaneous. It can take a couple days to complete this part of the process.
Transaction Fees
This is easily the factor that you’ll want to pay attention to the most, because a lot of merchant service providers are downright misleading when they quote your rates, and you need to get a firm understanding of how a company sets up its fees to know what to actually expect from your bill.
Most often, companies will quote something like 1.8% rates to interest you and appeal to your more frugal side, but then they’ll apply all sorts of hidden fees that raise that rate as high as 11% without notifying you properly. As you can imagine, that can make your bill a bit more than what you thought it would be.
There are three rate models that are most often used:
Flat-Rate
You’re given a specific amount to pay, and whether that covers your total fees or not, that’s what you pay. You could be overpaying tremendously if you accept a quite a few low cost cards vs. the higher cost cards. The processor is banking on your acceptance of these lower cards to ensure all costs are covered.
Interchange Plus Pricing
This takes the interchange fee you pay and adds a small fixed rate on top of it. It’s not as consistent as a flat-rate fee because of the sheer amount of interchange fees out there and the number of different credit cards with all of the various reward and incentive programs.
Tiered Pricing
This is when the provider creates a few tiers of fees and charges you based on the tier your fees are in rather than each individual fee. The only bad thing about this is that the provider decides which fees go into which tier.
Other Important Things to Consider
Does your processor provide Data Security/PCI protection? What about financial breach protection, in the event you are breached?
Any business or other entity that stores, processes or transmits cardholder data must ensure that their processes meet the Payment Card Industry / Data Security Standard (PCI/DSS). Failure to do so can result in heavy fines being levied.
Understanding PCI/DSS
The PCI/DSS is a global standard defining acceptable practice for any entity involved in the storage, transmission or processing of cardholder data.
In recognition of the sensitive, confidential and valuable nature of this data the standard imposes strict regulations which must be met in full. The full requirements are detailed but are covered by 12 broad requirements. These are grouped into 6 broad control objectives as follows:
1. Build and Maintain a Secure Network and Systems – Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect data – Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords and other security parameters
2. Protect Cardholder Data – Protect stored data (use encryption) – Encrypt transmission of cardholder data and sensitive information across public networks
3. Maintain a Vulnerability Management Program – Use and regularly update anti-virus software – Develop and maintain secure systems and applications
4. Implement Strong Access Control Measures -Restrict access to data by business need-to-know -Assign a unique ID to each person with computer access -Restrict physical access to cardholder data
5. Regularly Monitor and Test Networks -Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data -Regularly test security systems and processes
6. Maintain an Information Security Policy -Maintain a policy that addresses Information Security
Any entity handling card transactions must meet the standard and be able to demonstrate (certify) that it does so. The level of certification is flexible and depends on how transactions are processed and in what volume.
A Summary of Benefits
Achieving full compliance with PCI/DSS standards is more than an obligation. It delivers genuine benefits to businesses:
– Lessen the risk of fraudulent transactions
– Prevent security breaches
-Lessen the impact should a breach occur
– Reduce your business’ exposure to risk and liability
– Provide peace of mind for your customers
– Avoid the negative PR associated with data loss
Why are These Requirements in Place?
Card transactions have grown enormously in recent years as cards become the number 1 preferred form of payment. Since no physical money is handled or exchanged as part of these transactions they are dependent on the transfer of data.
That data therefore becomes sensitive and valuable and must be protected. Failure to protect this data can lead to fraud and theft. These crimes often impact both the card holder and the merchant directly. They can also damage or even destroy the reputation of businesses or organizations involved in hacks or data breaches.
More widely card fraud has the long-term detrimental effect of eroding consumer confidence and trust – both in the individual companies affected and in the card payment industry more widely.
Millions of consumers and organizations worldwide are choosing to pay by card. And millions of businesses, professionals, traders and organizations are accepting and handling these payments. Instead of allowing an ad-hoc approach where each business sets its own level of security the PCI / DSS was imposed. This ensures a uniformly high level of data security throughout the worldwide card payment industry.
With more retailers than ever before embracing e-commerce, the fraud journey is becoming a focus for many. It is clear, though, why retailers have paid more attention to the customer journey. After all, in addition to shaping a customer’s overall experience, a customer’s journey determines whether or not they will make a repeat purchase. Too often, however, when focusing solely on the customer journey, the fraudster’s journey remains overlooked. To bring the fraud journey into focus, we need to understand what it really is and where retailers should be placing their efforts.
Like the customer journey, the fraud journey is the path fraudsters take when interacting with a brand. In the case of the fraud journey, we consider the actions a fraudster takes to commit fraud. Understanding the fraud journey and focusing on the fraudster’s actions will enable online retailers to dramatically reduce fraud conversion rates and ultimately prevent fraud.
It’s not by chance that the customer’s journey and the fraudster’s journey are often mentioned together. In their attempt to satisfy customers while also detecting and preventing fraud, many retailers are faced with an impossible juggling act: Do I prevent fraud or give my customers the experience they want? True, balancing between the two, enabling the paths to co-exist, is challenging, yet it can be achieved. Taking the time to understand the intricacies of the fraud journey can help reduce false positives and cut down on chargebacks.
The True Cost of Chargebacks
Chargebacks. The very word sends shivers down the spine of even the most experienced online retail fraud fighters—with good reason. Chargebacks end up costing retailers in additional fees as well as in customer dissatisfaction and it’s nearly impossible to truly evaluate the cost of chargebacks.
It’s estimated that for every $100 in chargebacks, retailers end up paying $240! But the problem with chargebacks goes far beyond any fees or penalties incurred. The issue with chargebacks is that if a customer gets to the point where they have to request a chargeback, the damage has already been done.
Why Does the Fraud Journey Matter?
Let’s consider the forecast that e-commerce is expected to make up 22 percent of all global retail sales by 2023. Or that it’s predicted that U.S. e-commerce sales will jump 18 percent due to Covid-19. E-commerce sales are at an all-time high, and there are no signs this trend is going to slow down anytime soon. This emphasizes even more the need to focus on the fraud journey. The fraud journey has an impact when building an effective chargeback management strategy and it is directly linked to customer retention and acquisition.
The fraud journey gives one an in-depth understanding of users who could be fraudsters, based on suspicious behavior. Retailers looking to up their fraud prevention and chargeback management game, need to have a clear understanding of the fraud journey. This understanding will make it easy for them to differentiate actions a legitimate user would take, from fraudulent actions. For example, a change of the shipping address upon login indicates a possible fraudulent action. Carefully considering the behavior of a legitimate customer at every stage of the customer journey can help isolate suspicious activities with more accuracy, and thus cut down on false positives.
Fraud Prevention: The Ultimate Juggling Act
Understanding chargebacks and how to prevent them, starts with understanding how retailers approach fraud prevention. In cases where retailers focus on detection and prevention at the payment stage, or even only one part of the payment stage, fraudsters are able to successfully move through their journey undetected until it is too late.
If a fraudster’s activity is detected as suspicious and flagged only at the payment stage, gives an opportunistic fraudster plenty of opportunities to monetize the service by other means before their presence is detected. This could include everything from promo abuse and referral abuse to new account fraud.
That’s exactly why a more advanced fraud prevention and detection approach is required. For example, using technologies such as behavioral biometrics will enable retailers to stop a fraudster long before the payment stage, before any real damage is done, and will help cut down on chargebacks.
Is it really that simple? Retailers are rightfully concerned with the need to ensure that detection of fraud early in the fraud journey, early enough to prevent damage including chargebacks, will introduce as little friction as possible into the customer’s journey. At times it seems retailers can’t win. If they flag an activity as suspicious based on strict rules, they might find themselves with a rise in false positives and possibly disappointed legitimate customers. Other times retailers rely on fraud detection and prevention at the payment stage, ignoring any fraudulent activity, which happens before that, throughout the customer journey. Either way, with fraudulent activities getting more sophisticated, retailers are dealing with a growing number of chargebacks due to fraud.
In-depth understanding of the fraud journey, identifying and monitoring its various touchpoints, will help retailers to reduce fraud and still maintain the balance between customer satisfaction and security.
Proactive Chargeback Management
The common passive-reactive approach to chargeback management is proving to be insufficient as fraudsters are increasingly using tools such as bots and emulators to scale their attacks. Behavioral biometrics-based fraud detection introduces a proactive approach to counter advanced fraud. As opposed to focusing on login or checkout only, and reacting too late, behavioral biometrics focuses on user behavior throughout the entire customer journey, making it easy to identify suspicious and potentially fraudulent behavior at its earliest stage, enabling to stop the fraudster in his tracks, before damage is done.
Adopting advanced technologies like behavioral biometrics will provide retailers with visibility and insight into the entire fraud journey, leading to better, data-driven decision making, pre-transaction prevention and cut down chargebacks.
SecuredTouch is the expert in adaptive fraud detection solutions for online retailers and financial institutions. Using machine learning, the technology continuously analyzes hundreds of behavioral data points to differentiate between human and non-human behaviors, human to device interactions and behavioral anomalies to provide early detection of fraud. The solution identifies sophisticated fraud throughout the customer journey while simultaneously improving the user experience. Businesses benefit from reduced drain on internal resources and increased transaction rates, ultimately leading to an improved bottom line. Today, our award-winning solutions are used by some of the world’s largest retailers and financial institutions.
By Ran Wasserman, CTO, SecuredTouch – Sponsored Content
There are few moments like now where American consumers are collectively open to the idea of new payment methods – especially contactless ones such as mobile wallets. This is good news for businesses since mobile wallets offer a safer payment alternative to credit cards and drastically reduce customer wait times at checkout.
Mobile wallets (such as Apple Pay and PayPal) use authentication, monitoring and data encryption to secure and transmit personal information, and the level of security associated with them has payment card issuers backing their use. This is certainly helping drive consumer adoption, as does convenience.
In fact, global mobile wallet transaction value is estimated to reach nearly $14 trillion by 20201 – and that is a pre-COVID-19 estimate. New estimates are higher and point to further rapid adoption given the current need for touch-free payment options. According to a recently published Visa Back to Business report,* 70 percent of consumers surveyed in June 2020 have used a new shopping or payment method for the first time this year.
A rapid shift has begun and the numbers tell the storySo what is holding back business adoption of mobile wallets? Until recently, it just wasn’t a priority for many small- and medium-size businesses to enable it or educate their employees on its use. The lack of preferential demand didn’t make it a pressing topic. But that is changing. Consider this:
According to Forbes,2 by 2026, digital natives will be 59 percent of the consumers in the U.S. market.
Of this, 45 percent will be specifically Millennials and Gen Z, representing the largest purchasing power.
As Gen Z move into becoming the largest generation cohort, their purchasing power will be $143 billion.
But it’s not just what lies ahead that SMBs should be focused on now.
According to Visa’s Back to Business report, shoppers are now putting COVID-19 safety measures at the top of their shopping lists and they will reward stores that do the same. In fact, if all other factors were equal (price, selection, location), nearly 63 percent of consumers surveyed would switch to a new store that installed contactless payment options, such as mobile wallets.3
What does this mean for you? Now is the time to connect with customers to make sure they are fully contactless capable and have the technology in place to accept many of the most popular mobile wallets.
1Payments Industry Intelligence, “The rise of digital and mobile wallet: Global usage statistics from 2018,” November 25, 2018. 2Forbes, January 2020 3Visa Back to Business report 2020
Travel Agents prefer NTC ePay because they get paid faster with their very own “Buy Now” button or simply by requesting payments by email!
Last installment, we shared how the security of NTC Payment Processing works for you. In this second part of our three-part series, we discuss the ways that the technology behind NTC ePay helps your travel agency.
NTC ePay offers travel agents the most innovative technology because it is fast, mobile friendly and easy to use.
Whether you use Quickbooks, Peachtree or any other accounting application, you can enter the invoice number into the ePay application for reconciliation, and you can customize your pricing to any amount you choose. Your agency can create invoice and payment links that can be posted to your website or any social media website for payment.
Don’t you like it when everything seems to work together, making your day a lot easier? Technology is something that can get your daily workflow to go smoothly, and NTC ePay works for you. If you need a customized solution to go with your workflow, NTC can make most anything a reality for your business workflow.
National Transaction Corporation is one of the few travel payment processing companies that can directly integrate with both TRAMS and SABRE. You can perform your bookings like you always have but have the payment flow the way you need it to. We also integrate with many booking engines and shopping carts allowing you many options that are not available by host agencies.
NTC ePay is simple, secure and sets up in just minutes. It’s a web application, so you can use it on any device you already own: your desktop, laptop, tablet or phone. It lets you add inventory items or use the quick send feature for simplified invoicing.
Our ePay product was designed from the ground up with your security in mind. Even though we encrypt data back and forth to the payment gateway, we also use the gateway to handle the cardholder’s input. NTC’s cutting-edge technology doesn’t store credit card data, nor does it transmit that data. What that means to you is that the liability is 100% on the bank and not you – the merchant – as is typically the case. The application is written and hosted on our own servers, so you can set up and be in the ecommerce business within minutes.
By the way, there are also many customizations available to you with NTC ePay which can be set up very easily by your users. Inquire with your specific process and we will meet your specific needs in the travel payment scope.
Now when you run a social media campaign you can leverage our NTC ePay technology to help you increase sales. Use our ePay links to post vacation packages or special sales and have customers pay by two clicks.
Next week we will share the third reason in this series why National Transaction Corporation is the preferred choice for travel agents like you.
Remember, when you need a safe and technologically advanced gateway to manage all your travel agency payments, look no further than NTC.
Feel free to call us now at 888-996-2273, if you are ready to start using NTC ePay today.
Mobile Wallet Technology have flooded the market in the last few years with offerings such as Apple Pay, Android pay, Samsung Pay and more. And so far, they seem to be succeeding.
To understand how contactless payments work, here is an example.
A smart phone like Android or iPhone allows you to take advantage of mobile wallets like Android Pay, Apple Pay or Samsung Pay. You input your credit card information onto your phone, which stores it for later use.
If you’re shopping at a store that has mobile payment readers at the register, rather than reach for your wallet and get your credit card; you take out your phone to make a payment.
The point-of-sale (POS) terminal will automatically reads the payment information stored by holding your mobile phone a few inches away from the POS, and then processes the transaction. When the mobile device is in range, a wireless communication protocol links the terminal and the phone, which exchange information and conduct a secure transaction in a fraction of a second.
Near-field communication or NFC technology, works by bringing together two electronic devices. In terms of payments technology, a mobile device such as a smartphone and a reader. The reader would be the initiator and the smartphone would be the target, which contains the stored credit card information.
The market potential for NFC payment technology is huge, as more merchants adopt the EMV. EMV compliant terminals accept NFC payments through mobile wallets.
For Electronic Payment set up call now 888-996-2273!
Online fraud is not going away; hackers are becoming more sophisticated. While technology offer more avenues for consumers to pay, they also offer new ways for hackers to steal data.
There are several factors that increases the growth of online fraud:
EMV migration: because of EMV migration,fraud in face to face transactions becomes more difficult and moves to card-not-present transaction. This has been observed after EMV is implemented in other country.
Banking activity: it is moving online not only via online-only banks, but also mobile and online bank services.
An increase of online marketplaces: financial services pros are more proficient in identifying fraud compare to individual consumers who become sellers that can be victims of online fraud.
How can e-commerce and financial services companies reduce online fraud?
Merchants:Ensure that you have payment security. Fraudsters use sophisticated technologies, ask your payment provider for encryption and tokenization. You can also use BIN LookUp as an added security and number of benefits. Bin LookUp allows merchant or institution to check more about the transaction.
Online marketplaces: Marketplaces can protect their reputation by validating new sellers using sophisticated device and applying advanced models and machine learning to detect unusual patterns of activity that indicate misuse.
Banks: Fraudsters continue to innovate. Bank technology needs to be flexible and stay one step ahead.
Let’s talk about your money, and how to make more of it. Today money is taking on a new form. It’s digital, it’s electronic and it’s everywhere and anywhere 24/7/365.
Payment acceptance is key to making more money. You don’t make more money by not accepting a transaction, and making the experience convenient and safe to your customer can bring loyalty.
Let’s break down a transaction.
Cash, but that would mean that the customer has to be in front of you. You could take checks, those are safe to mail, but then you don’t have your money until you drive to the bank and cash or deposit the check.
So how do we easily and securely transfer funds for a transaction? The answer lies in digital or electronic payments. Accepting credit cards, debit cards, ebt cards or even gift & loyalty cards and electronic checks. These provide secure and convenient ways to complete transactions for your customers. If you want to make more money, make it easy for customers to spend it while making it faster for you to receive it. That’s where a merchant account comes in.
A merchant account allows you to deposit funds directly into your bank account in as little as a few hours. Whether the customer swipes their card into your smartphone, calls it in over the phone or keys it into your web site, just having a merchant account can be a huge advantage over competitors.
It allows you to conduct transactions in more ways than cash or checks alone. Transactions are recorded automatically and can easily be reconciled for both customer and merchant. Most importantly it widens the opportunities to conduct sales to the widest customer audience possible.
No matter what you sell or how you sell it, the sale is only complete once the funds are transferred from one party to the other.
It’s important to recognize your missed opportunities. Could accepting electronic payments help increase your revenue stream? We’re here to help you make more money, let us show you the many ways we can do just that. Let’s talk, 888-996-CARD (2273)