October 23rd, 2015 by Elma Jane
Loyalty programs continue to change and evolve, with the new and more powerful technology available today, rewarding customers is becoming easier and more targeted.
If you’re starting a new loyalty program or looking to maximize an existing one check this out.
Communication Is Key
Consumer-facing technology is playing a big role in today’s loyalty and rewards programs. Communication with customers is one of the most important marketing tools in loyalty, including digital coupons, direct communication and mobile payment via smartphones and apps.
Keep It Simple
The message to the customer should be simple, as loyalty and rewards programs may be complex and detailed on the backend. Employees should be able to easily communicate how the program works and it should be easy for consumers to understand.
Make It Mobile
Mobile apps, can connect with loyal customers on the go, and utilize messaging and notifications to communicate relevant promotions. The next wave of mobile will be mobile wallet integration, utilizing the big platforms like Google Pay and Apple Pay.
Personalize Offers
Loyalty and rewards programs are becoming more personal. With data and analytics can target promotions and offers based on customer behavior.
Top-Down Approach
When launching or building a loyalty or rewards program, companies need to get everyone on board, explain the goals of the program and what it will look like for customers. Everyone should understand the program and how it works.
For more information about Loyalty Rewards Program and Gift Card Processing you can give us a call now at 888-996-2273 or go to https://www.nationaltransaction.com/merchant-services/gift-card-loyalty-rewards-processing.html
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Gift & Loyalty Card Processing Tagged with: Apple Pay, data, Google Pay, Loyalty Rewards Programs, mobile payment, mobile wallet
July 30th, 2015 by Elma Jane
Converge Powers Potential 
Over the next several weeks, we’ll focus on a series of topics to hopefully provide a better understanding of the payment capabilities
Converge can bring you customers. In this article, we’ll zoom in on the card-present product enhancements of Converge first, including bringing EMV and mobile wallet capabilities to in-person payments, and ultimately VirtualMerchant Mobile later this year.
New Peripherals Added to Converge – Ingenico iSC250 and Star Micronics TSP650II Printer
Ingenico iSC250 Signature-Capture PIN Pad – is a signature-capture PIN pad offering the ability to accept PIN-based transactions, like debit card and Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT), as well as EMV chip card and mobile wallet payments.
The iSC250 will initially ship EMV-capable meaning it’s physically configured with a slot to accept an EMV chip card, but it does not yet have the EMV application to process a chip card transaction.
A simple download process later in the year will allow customers to accept chip cards. The good news is customers can accept NFC contactless payments right away, including Apple Pay and Google Wallet.
Key features of the Ingenico iSC250 include:
- EMV-capable smart card reader to support EMV chip cards; EMV-enabled with a download later in the year
- NFC-enabled for contactless cards and Apple Pay and Google Wallet mobile wallets
- Magnetic stripe capture for all standard mag stripe cards
- Encryption technology to help secure cardholder data at point of entry and throughout the payment network
- Signature Area Display for signature capture with electronic stylus
- Bright color 4.3″ display and backlit key pad for ease of use
Star Micronics TSP650III:
In addition to the new iSC250PIN pad, a new USB printer were also added to the lineup of Converge supported peripherals, the Star Micronics TSP650II receipt printer. Now customers have two options for thermal receipt printing!
ConvergeConnect Makes Device Setup a Snap
A new peripheral and device management software called ConvergeConnect to make it easier for your customers to setup their devices quickly as well as add additional peripherals as their business needs grow. It will be the go-forward device management application, and we’ll be able to bring more and more EMV and NFC devices to market faster, giving our customers even more in-store payment processing options.
Legacy peripherals, like magnetic stripe card readers, check imagers and the Epson ReadyPrint T20 printer will continue to be managed using the Device Assistant.
Customers may have to use both ConvergeConnect and Device Assistant depending on their peripheral configuration.
A new Peripheral Device Installation and Setup Guide was developed to help customers install and manage their peripherals for both applications.
Converge Mobile with EMV on the Horizon
Work continues on the new VirtualMerchant Mobile app to be branded as Converge Mobile, and releasing the Ingenico iCMP in the third quarter. The Ingenico iCMP accepts EMV and NFC transactions, including contactless cards and mobile wallets, like Apple Pay. Stay tuned as more information becomes available.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit Card Reader Terminal, EMV EuroPay MasterCard Visa, Mobile Payments, Near Field Communication Tagged with: card-present product, cardholder, chip card, contactless payments, data, debit card, EBT, Electronic Benefit Transfer, EMV, mag stripe cards, mobile wallet, nfc, NFC transactions, payment network, payments, PIN pad, PIN-based transactions, smart card reader, VirtualMerchant Mobile
September 2nd, 2014 by Elma Jane
While Apple doesn’t talk about future products,latest report that the next iPhone would include mobile-payment capabilities powered by a short-distance wireless technology called near-field communication or NFC. Apple is hosting an event on September 9th, that’s widely expected to be the debut of the next iPhone or iPhones. Mobile payments, or the notion that you can pay for goods and services at the checkout with your smartphone, may finally break into the mainstream if Apple and the iPhone 6 get involved.
Apple’s embrace of mobile payments would represent a watershed moment for how people pay at drugstores, supermarkets or for cabs. The technology and capability to pay with a tap of your mobile device has been around for years, you can tap an NFC-enabled Samsung Galaxy S5 or NFC-enabled credit card at point-of-sale terminals found at many Walgreen drugstores, but awareness and usage remain low. Apple has again the opportunity to transform, disrupt and reshape an entire business sector. It is hard to overestimate what impact Apple could have if it really wants to play in the payments market.
Apple won’t be the first to enter the mobile-payments arena. Google introduced its Google Wallet service in May 2011. The wireless carriers formed their joint venture with the intent to create a platform for mobile payments. Apple tends to stay away from new technologies until it has had a chance to smooth out the kinks. It was two years behind some smartphones in offering an iPhone that could tap into the faster LTE wireless network. NFC was rumored to be included in at least the last two iPhones and could finally make its appearance in the iPhone 6. The technology will be the linchpin to enabling transactions at the checkout.
Struggles
The notion of turning smartphones into true digital wallets including the ability to pay at the register, has been hyped up for years. But so far, it’s been more promise than results. There have been many technical hurdles to making mobile devices an alternative to cash, checks, and credit cards. NFC technology has to be included in both the smartphone and the point-of-sale terminal to work, and it’s been a slow process getting NFC chips into more equipment. NFC has largely been relegated to a feature found on higher-end smartphones such as the Galaxy S5 or the Nexus 5. There’s also confusion on both sides, the merchant and the customer, on how the tech works and why tapping your smartphone on a checkout machine is any faster, better or easier than swiping a card. There’s a chicken-and-egg problem between lack of user adoption and lack of retailer adoption. It’s one reason why even powerhouses such as Google have struggled. Despite a splashy launch of its digital wallet and payment service more than three years ago, Google hasn’t won mainstream acceptance or even awareness for its mobile wallet. Google hasn’t said how many people are using Google Wallet, but a look at its page on the Google Play store lists more than 47,000 reviews giving it an average of a four-star rating.
The Puzzle
Apple has quietly built the foundation to its mobile-payment service in Passbook, an app introduced two years ago in its iOS software and released as a feature with the iPhone 4S. Passbook has so far served as a repository for airline tickets, membership cards, and credit card statements. While it started out with just a handful of compatible apps, Passbook works with apps from Delta, Starbucks, Fandango, The Home Depot, and more. But it could potentially be more powerful. Apple’s already made great inroads with Passbook, it could totally crack open the mobile payments space in the US. Apple could make up a fifth of the share of the mobile-payment transactions in a short few months after the launch. The company also has the credit or debit card information for virtually all of its customers thanks to its iTunes service, so it doesn’t have to go the extra step of asking people to sign up for a new service. That takes away one of the biggest hurdles to adoption. The last piece of the mobile-payments puzzle with the iPhone is the fingerprint recognition sensor Apple added into last year’s iPhone 5S. That sensor will almost certainly make its way to the upcoming iPhone 6. The fingerprint sensor, which Apple obtained through its acquisition of Authentic in 2012, could serve as a quick and secure way of verifying purchases, not just through online purchases, but large transactions made at big-box retailers such as Best Buy. Today, you can use the fingerprint sensor to quickly buy content from Apple’s iTunes, App and iBooks stores.
The bigger win for Apple is the services and features it could add on to a simple transaction, if it’s successful in raising the awareness of a form of payment that has been quietly lingering for years. Google had previously seen mobile payments as the optimal location for targeted advertisements and offers. It’s those services and features that ultimately matter in the end, replacing a simple credit card swipe isn’t that big of a deal.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Mobile Payments, Mobile Point of Sale, Smartphone Tagged with: app, Apple, card, card swipe, cash, checkout machine, checks, chips, credit, credit card swipe, credit-card, customer, debit card, Digital wallets, fingerprint recognition, fingerprint sensor, Galaxy S5, Google Wallet, iOS, Iphone, market, merchant, mobile, mobile device, mobile payment, mobile wallet, Near Field Communication, network, Nexus 5, nfc, payment, payment service, platform, point of sale, products, sensor, services, smartphone, software, statements, swiping card, terminals, transactions, wireless technology
August 8th, 2014 by Elma Jane
Apple talking to Visa about mobile payments
Apple is in talks with Visa as it ponders launching a mobile wallet this autumn. The latest bout of rumours suggest that the ability to make instore payments could finally arrive with the iPhone 6, although the information’s sources offer contradictory takes on the technology, with one saying that the system is likely to be NFC-based and another suggesting that it will rely on Bluetooth and WiFi. The report suggests that Apple will not be going down the host card emulation route, instead making use of the Secure Element, although the famously proprietorial tech titan has no intention of giving up any control to wireless carriers. Apple hopes that working with Visa will also help it bypass the payment processing chain, helping it to lower costs for merchants and customers.
Posted in EMV EuroPay MasterCard Visa, Mobile Payments, Smartphone, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: Apple, bluetooth, customers, host card emulation, instore payments, iPhone 6, Merchant's, mobile wallet, nfc, payment processing, secure element, visa, wifi, wireless carriers
May 6th, 2014 by Elma Jane
Boston-based Loop has released its LoopWallet app for storing magnetic-stripe cards on smartphones and using them in contactless payments at regular POS terminals.
Loop is a Level One PCI certified payment provider. Its technology has applications for turning loyalty cards into contactless cards and can also be used to generate dynamic card data every time a payment is made, preventing the creation of cloned cards.
The Loop Fob contains a microprocessor and magnetic induction loop and can be used without a phone, in which case payment would be taken from a designated card.
Mag-stripe cards for payment, gift, loyalty, ID or membership are read by the Loop Fob, a small audio jack magnetic-stripe reader, and then card data is encrypted and stored on the user’s smartphone. The LoopWallet app allows users to view their cards and select the one they wish to use.
To make a payment at the point of sale, the phone sends a signal, using Loop’s Magnetic Secure Transmission technology. MST emulates the signal generated when a mag-stripe card is swiped across a POS terminal’s read head. The signal is received by any mag-stripe card reader without requiring modifications to the POS terminal or processing system.
The free LoopWallet App for iOS 7 is available in the Apple App Store, with an Android version planned for release in April 2014. The app is only available to U.S. consumers.
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Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit card Processing, Digital Wallet Privacy, Electronic Payments, EMV EuroPay MasterCard Visa Tagged with: contactless, mag-stripe readers, magnetic stripe, mobile wallet, PCI
November 19th, 2013 by Elma Jane
ISIS Electronic Wallet
Available Nationwide Isis Mobile Wallet
Latest version of the Isis Mobile Wallet has been announced. This is now available to consumers for download in the Google Play app store and at thousands of AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless retail stores nationwide. Isis Mobile Wallet allows customers to pay at contactless payment terminals, and to save money through special offers and loyalty cards at participating merchants – all from their Isis Ready smartphone.
Today’s Isis Mobile Wallet nationwide launch is a milestone for consumers, merchants and banks. It’s the start of a smarter way to pay.
Together with Isis partners, a seamless mobile commerce experience have been built. Isis pleased to bring the magic and simplicity of the Isis Mobile Wallet to consumers across the U.S.
The redesigned Isis Mobile Wallet features a simplified user interface with a clean, white background and easy-to-navigate toolbars. Starting today, customers with one of the more than 40 Isis Ready smartphones available from AT&T, T-Mobile or Verizon Wireless can receive a free enhanced SIM card from their wireless carrier and download the Isis Mobile Wallet for free from Google Play. Integration with American Express Serve makes it convenient for Isis Mobile Wallet users to load funds to their American Express Serve Account from a U.S. debit or credit card, bank account, or through direct deposit, as well as pay bills online and send money to friends and family using an American Express Serve Account.
Posted in Digital Wallet Privacy, Electronic Payments, Mobile Payments, Near Field Communication, Smartphone, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: American Express, AT&T, banks, bills, carrier, contactless, debit or credit, google, interface, ISIS, loyalty cards, Merchant's, mobile wallet, online, payment terminal, play app, smartphone, T-Mobile, Verizon, wireless
October 28th, 2013 by Elma Jane
With banks and shops starting to let customers pay by tapping their smart phones on terminals in stores, the future of plastic credit cards is looking shaky.
MasterCard, which has teamed with Coles and CommBank on these ventures, yesterday said Australians were rapidly embracing contactless payments using PayPass and rival Visa’s payWave. At Coles, six out of 10 MasterCard and Visa payments were contactless.
MasterCard head of market development and innovation for Australasia said three out of 10 MasterCard terminal payments were contactless and there were now more than 175,000 terminals nationwide that could accept them. More than 10 million MasterCards in Australia could make contactless payments.
An EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) standard meant all terminals were capable of handling different brands of contactless payments.
The first stage of the contactless payments or “tap and go” revolution began with Visa payWave and MasterCard PayPass in Australia and the first institution to make contactless payments available locally was the Commonwealth Bank in 2006.
The next stage is to use smartphones rather than just plastic cards for contactless payments. Customers still use their Visa and MasterCard accounts, but the transaction is effected using a Near Field Communication sticker placed on the back of the phone, or an embedded, secure NFC element inside modern Android smartphones.
In Europe, NFC-enabled watches, wristbands, key rings and fobs also were being used for contactless payments and there was no reason this couldn’t happen here.
Visa said it had made a “significant investment” in a mobile NFC ecosystem.
“Visa is working closely with partners like Samsung, Vodafone and Optus on a range of mobile payment solutions that use the secure element and prepaid SIM models.”
CommBank, which previously enabled contactless payments from an iPhone housed in a special case, last week said it would let customers pay directly from their Apple phone using an NFC sticker, and from newer Android phones with embedded secure NFC technology.
The new facility, to be rolled out in the current financial year, is part of a revamp of the bank’s smartphones apps.
Coles said contactless payments had increased in the past year by more than 70 per cent while CommBank’s volume of contactless payments had increased six fold in 12 months. Westpac said it was piloting an Android mobile contactless payment application and was also investigating smartwatch payments.
“We also believe that the next big trend after the rise of mobiles and NFC in Australia will be mobile checkouts, where shoppers purchase products and have them delivered within two or three clicks,” a spokeswoman said, and the moves were “as big a market shift as we’ve ever seen”.
Coles also announced a trial of its own contactless payments technology using NFC stickers. Funds would be drawn from Coles Rewards MasterCards. Some 5000 mobile phone tags would be issued in a trial.
ANZ said it was continuing its trial of a mobile wallet for Android phones begun last year, ahead of making the solution available to customers.
“Our NFC pilot with Samsung and Optus is tracking well and we’re also investigating other payment options such as QR codes,” an ANZ spokesman said.
“Given the fragmentation of the market, we will continue to monitor developments before finalising how we will bring a viable mobile wallet solution for our customers to market.”
St George Bank chief information officer said his bank planned to have a contactless phone payments solution in the market “sometime in 2014”.
The bank has previously been reported to be looking at payments via the Pebble and Samsung smart watches.
National Australia Bank, which unveiled its peer-to-peer payments app, NAB Flik, last month, said it was watching how the contactless payments market developed with “less focus on being first to market and more focus on being best in market.”
The Australian reported last month that Apple and PayPal were exploring an alternative to NFC-enabled contactless payments called iBeacons. When you pass close to a store in a shopping centre, a beacon will detect your phone’s presence and automatically alert you to signature items for sale and specials, or offer other information to lure you inside, and process payments.
CommBank last week told The Australian it was looking at iBeacons technology.
Posted in Credit card Processing, Electronic Payments, EMV EuroPay MasterCard Visa, Near Field Communication, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: accounts, Android, banks, checkouts, contactless, embedded, EMV, EuroPay, fobs, Iphone, MasterCard, mobile, mobile wallet, Near Field Communication, nfc, optus, payments, paypass, paywave, phone, plastic credit cards, prepaid, process payments, qr codes, Samsung, secure, shops, sim, smart phones, Smartphones, smartwatch, sticker, store's, Tags, tap and go, tapping, terminal, terminals, transaction, visa's, vodafone
August 16th, 2013 by Admin
Facebook is doing early testing of a payment system to store credit card data and processes transactions through PayPal or other merchant service providers including Stripe or Braintree. Facebook would store credit card data for use in purchases in Facebook Gifts and games played on Facebook. The thought behind the move being that it makes it easier for people to make mobile transactions on third party apps giving strength to their advertising platform.
In a statement, Facebook said…
“We are working on a very small test that gives people the option to use their payment information already stored on Facebook to populate the payment form when they make a purchase in a mobile app. The app then processes and completes the payment. The test is designed to make it easier and faster for people to make a purchase in a mobile app by simply pre-populating your payment information. It will be a very small test with 1-2 partners. Additionally, this test does not involve moving the payment processing away from an app’s current payments provider, such as Paypal. We continue to have a great relationship with our payment processing partners, and this product is simply to test how we can help apps provide a simpler commerce experience.”
This marks a bold move whether or not Facebook is actually conducting the transaction itself. Higher conversion rates on their advertising for app developers and advertisers. Mobile Wallets have a proven success for the likes of Amazon, Apple and Google where repeat transactions are the norm. The move could signal that Facebook is looking to move further into e-commerce and digital transaction payments and to buy or build their own payment processing division. It’s also a signal that digital identity and verification could be on the horizon.
Combined with the data Facebook already knows about its users, the company could store things like clothing sizes, shoe sizes, travel itineraries, music or event preferences and much more. This could be a catalyst to send that data automatically to vendors at the point of sale. Things like email addresses are already shared to third party apps if you allow them to. Loyalty rewards might be offered to users to allow the data to be shared with vendors for deeper demographic information.
In addition to mobile payments, Facebook has experimented with virtual currency transactions with its Facebook Credits initiative. They exited the strategy because mostly because developers moved to other virtual currencies like BitCoin and LiteCoin. Recently Facebook Gifts lets users send one another physical gifts and presents a gift suggestion when it notifies users of a birthday. Pulling down the barrier and simplifying a complicated transaction could make it a boon to retailers looking toward mobile payment processing.
Posted in Digital Wallet Privacy, Electronic Payments, Mobile Payments, Mobile Point of Sale Tagged with: digital, electronic, Faceboo, mobile payment, mobile wallet, PayPal, Stripe
China
People’s Online Daily is reporting that online electronic payment transactions carried out on Chinese mobile payment providers is expected to be above 9 Trillion yuan, which is $1.45 Trillion in U.S. Currency. China’s mobile electronic payments in 2012 were at 800 billion yuan. That sets an increase in mobile payments made on smartphones and tablets at 265% over the previous year. With more and more Chinese citizens coming online analysts say that the steady growth in the mobile payment landscape is expected to continue to rise well into 2020. Last year, mobile electronic payment transactions rose 66% to nearly 3.7 trillion yuan. Read more of this article »
Posted in Mobile Payments Tagged with: China, Digital Wallet, electronic payments, Illinois, India, mobile payment, mobile wallet, Processing, transactions
Yet another payment solution on the horizon is the MCE initiative for smartphones and tablets. The new solution is being led by 7-eleven, BestBuy, CVS Pharmacy, Darden Restaurants, Lowes, Publix, Sears, Shell Oil, Sunoco, Target, Dunkin’ Donuts, Bed Bath & Beyond and WalMart. According to their website, “Development of the mobile application is underway, with an initial focus on a flexible solution that will offer merchants a customizable platform with the features and functionality needed to best meet consumers’ needs.” The company intends to make their application available on all major smartphone platforms.
This latest solution is a mobile wallet that has serious potential to change the way consumers fulfill their mobile payments. The mobile app links a customers smartphone directly to their bank account allowing merchants to accept non-cash payment without involving credit card processing fees.
Though this is a significant shift from other mobile digital wallet schemes, the biggest difference might be in Loyalty Card programs used to entice existing customers to stop and shop. The creative potential for these types of programs go well beyond gift card processing and extend to e-mail and social networking. Customers could receive special offers based on the word of mouth, social sharing they do for the large retailers.
This mobile payment solution is initially just for the big boys though. They are catering to their own needs currently and there is no future consideration for small to medium size business in their digital wallet. With how fast things change in the mobile payment industry, this too could change and usher in new currencies for universal digital wallet payments.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: Digital Wallet, Merchant Customer, mobile payment, mobile wallet, payments, smartphone, tablet
