November 5th, 2015 by Elma Jane
EMV-compliant POS systems are now being equipped with NFC technology to accept contactless payments. What does this mean for the future of payments?
EMV lays the foundation for increased card-present and contactless payments security, with EMV, magnetic stripe cards are soon to be a bygone technology. Plastic EMV cards will not have a long lifespan as payments move into a more digital space, security and NFC upgrades merchants and consumers now will carry over into the digital and mobile payments space.
Consumers are constantly looking for more convenient ways to transact, which is made possible by the simultaneous adoption of EMV and NFC. While EMV supports plastic chip cards, payments are going digital and POS systems equipped with NFC technology save consumers from digging through their wallets, making it easier for consumers to transact via mobile devices. Mobile payments should be simple, scalable and affordable in today’s payment landscape and consumers should have the option to securely store and use multiple cards within their digital wallets or applications they most often use.
EMV standards increase security for card-present payments, which are relevant to many consumers today, but the convenience of mobile and contactless payments is the future. In an era of EMV, NFC plays as critical a role in propelling both technologies forward. Retailers and card issuers alike must recognize the opportunity to take advantage of both.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit Card Security, EMV EuroPay MasterCard Visa, Smartphone Tagged with: (POS) systems, card present, chip cards, contactless payments, Digital wallets, EMV, magnetic stripe cards, merchants, Mobile Payments, nfc technology, payments
October 13th, 2015 by Elma Jane
What can near field communication do for individual and how can it make lives easier. Many uses of NFC technology offer benefits in a number of everyday tasks ranging from paying for groceries to receiving adequate health care treatments.
Check this out if the benefits are worth it:
Contactless Payments – well-known use of NFC technology is for contactless payment. Customers can use their smartphone over a card reader to make a purchase without swiping or counting out cash. This saves time and also reduces the chances of losing a credit card that comes with carrying multiple cards around.
Health Care – With NFC technology, hospitals can better track patient information and doctors’ notes in real-time. This helps prevent the wrong medications from going to the wrong patient and creates a streamlined system focused on the best in patient care.
Information Sharing – NFC tags most common way NFC is currently used on Android and Windows phones. Using your Phone or Tablet, you can tap a strategically-placed NFC tag, which prompts your phone to take action on something, like automatically prompts your phone to enable Wi-Fi, disable sounds and decrease brightness. Exchange information between two Android phones.
Pairing with Devices – Smart household appliances are adopting NFC. LG’s smart washing machines let you pair your phone with the machine so that you can remotely monitor the washing cycle.
Social Networking Social networking is booming, and NFC tags are looking to get in on the action. NFC allows users to interact with each other and update their location and other info without any unnecessary log-ins or tapping through menu screens.
Transportation – Swiping a smartphone not only allows the passenger access to the subway but also keeps track of the number of trips he has left. Passengers can come and go much faster and easily pay for extra trips.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Near Field Communication, Smartphone Tagged with: Android, card reader, contactless payment, credit card, health care, Near Field Communication, nfc technology, smartphone
May 21st, 2014 by Elma Jane
Mobile credit card processing is way cheaper than traditional point-of-sale (POS) systems. Accepting credit cards using mobile devices is stressful, not to mention a hassle to set up and customers would never dare compromise security by saving or swiping their credit cards on a mobile device. Some of the many myths surrounding mobile payments, which allow merchants to process credit card payments using smartphones and tablets. Merchants process payments using a physical credit card reader attached to a mobile device or by scanning previously stored credit card information from a mobile app, as is the case with mobile wallets. Benefits include convenience, a streamlined POS system and access to a breadth of business opportunities based on collected consumer data. Nevertheless, mobile payments as a whole remains a hotly debated topic among retailers, customers and industry experts alike.
Although mobile payment adoption has been slow, consumers are steadily shifting their preferences as an increasing number of merchants implement mobile payment technologies (made easier and more accessible by major mobile payment players such as Square and PayPal). To stay competitive, it’s more important than ever for small businesses to stay current and understand where mobile payment technology is heading.
If you’re considering adopting mobile payments or are simply curious about the technology, here are mobile payment myths that you may have heard, but are completely untrue.
All rates are conveniently the same. Thanks to the marketing of big players like Square and PayPal – which are not actually credit card processors, but aggregators rates can vary widely and significantly. For instance, consider that the average debit rate is 1.35 percent. Square’s is 2.75 percent and PayPal Here’s is 2.7 percent, so customers will have to pay an additional 1.41 percent and 1.35 percent, respectively, using these two services. Some cards also get charged well over 4 percent, such as foreign rewards cards. These companies profit & mobile customers lose. Always read the fine print.
Credit card information is stored on my mobile device after a transaction. Good mobile developers do not store any critical information on the device. That information should only be transferred through an encrypted, secure handshake between the application and the processor. No information should be stored or left hanging around following the transaction.
I already have a POS system – the hassle isn’t worth it. Mobile payments offer more flexibility to reach the customer than ever before. No longer are sales people tied to a cash register and counters to finish the sale. That flexibility can mean the difference between revenue and a lost sale. Mobile payments also have the latest technology to track sales, log revenue, fight chargebacks, and analyze performance quickly and easily.
If we build it, they will come. Many wallet providers believe that if you simply build a new mobile payment method into the phones, consumers will adopt it as their new wallet. This includes proponents of NFC technology, QR codes, Bluetooth and other technologies, but given very few merchants have the POS systems to accept these new types of technologies, consumers have not adopted. Currently, only 6.6 percent of merchants can accept NFC, and even less for QR codes or BLE technology, hence the extremely slow adoption rate. Simply put, the new solutions are NOT convenient, and do not replace consumers’ existing wallets, not even close.
It raises the risk of fraud. Fraud’s always a concern. However, since data isn’t stored on the device for Square and others, the data is stored on their servers, the risk is lessened. For example, there’s no need for you to fear one of your employees walking out with your tablet and downloading all of your customers’ info from the tablet. There’s also no heightened fraud risk for data loss if a tablet or mobile device is ever sold.
Mobile processing apps are error-free. Data corruption glitches do happen on wireless mobile devices. A merchant using mobile credit card processing apps needs to be more diligent to review their mobile processing transactions. Mobile technology is fantastic when it works.
Mobile wallets are about to happen. They aren’t about to happen, especially in developed markets like the U.S. It took 60 years to put in the banking infrastructure we have today and it will take years for mobile wallets to achieve critical mass here.
Setup is difficult and complicated. Setting up usually just involves downloading the vendor’s app and following the necessary steps to get the hardware and software up and running. The beauty of modern payment solutions is that like most mobile apps, they are built to be user-friendly and intuitive so merchants would have little trouble setting them up. Most mobile payment providers offer customer support as well, so you can always give them a call in the unlikely event that you have trouble setting up the system.
The biggest business opportunity in the mobile payments space is in developed markets. While most investments and activity in the Mobile Point of Sale space take place today in developed markets (North America and Western Europe), the largest opportunity is actually in emerging markets where most merchants are informal and by definition can’t get a merchant account to accept card payments. Credit and debit card penetration is higher in developed markets, but informal merchants account for the majority of payments volume in emerging markets and all those transactions are conducted in cash today.
Wireless devices are unreliable. Reliability is very often brought up as I think many businesses are wary of fully wireless setups. I think this is partly justified, but very easily mitigated, for example with a separate Wi-Fi network solely for point of sale and payments. With the right device, network equipment, software and card processor, reliability shouldn’t be an issue.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Mobile Payments, Mobile Point of Sale, Smartphone Tagged with: (POS) systems, aggregators rates, apps, BLE technology, bluetooth, card, card processor, card reader, cash, cash register, chargebacks, consumer data, credit, credit card payments, credit card processing, credit card processors, credit card reader, credit-card, customer support, data, data loss, debit card, debit rate, device, fraud, fraud risk, hardware, industry experts, merchant account, Merchant's, mobile, mobile app, mobile credit card processing, Mobile Devices, Mobile Payments, mobile point of sale, Mobile processing apps, mobile processing transactions, mobile technology, mobile wallets, network, network equipment, nfc, nfc technology, payment solutions, payment technology, PayPal, phones, point of sale, qr codes, retailers, rewards cards, Security, Smartphones, software, Square, tablet, tablets, vendor's app, wallet providers, Wi-Fi network, wireless mobile, wireless mobile devices
January 21st, 2014 by Elma Jane
A “cryptocurrency” is a peer-to-peer, decentralized, digital currency. Cryptocurrencies offer the potential for merchants to one day break the stranglehold of credit card processing fees. Cryptocurrencies are a disruptive technology that should be actively followed and considered. After all, online commerce is itself a disruptive technology.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin’s high cryptographic security allows it to process transactions in a very efficient and inexpensive way. You can make and receive payments using the Bitcoin network with little or no fees, and without a merchant account. Payments are made from a wallet application, either on your computer or smartphone, by entering the recipient’s address, the payment amount, and pressing send. To make it easier to enter a recipient’s address, many wallets can obtain the address by scanning a QR code or touching two phones together with NFC technology. Market Cap: $10.6 billion (12.1 million coins).
Bitcoin is the first implementation of a cryptocurrency, which was first described in 1998 by Wei Dai and specified by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009, establishing a decentralized form of money that uses cryptography to control its creation and transactions. New Bitcoins are generated by a competitive and decentralized process called “mining,” the process of spending computing power to process transactions, secure the network, and keep everyone in the system synchronized together. The number of new Bitcoins created each year is automatically halved over time until Bitcoin issuance halts completely with a total of 21 million Bitcoins in existence.
Feathercoin – is based on Litecoin’s Scrypt-based hashing algorithm for GPU mining, rather than requiring Bitcoin’s expensive ASIC mining hardware. Feathercoin uses advanced checkpointing to provide additional security through a form of centralization without having to redistribute the Feathercoin software. At mining completion, 336 million coins will be produced. Market Cap: $11 million (26.2 million coins).
Litecoin – is based on the Bitcoin protocol, but differs from Bitcoin in that it can be efficiently mined with consumer-grade hardware. Litecoin provides faster transaction confirmations and uses a mining proof-of-work algorithm to target the regular computers with GPUs — graphics processing unite — most people already have. Litecoin provides a mining algorithm that can run at the same time on the same hardware used to mine Bitcoins. The Litecoin network is scheduled to produce 84 million currency units. Market Cap: $731 million (23.9 million coins).
Megacoin – raises the most red flags among this list of cryptocurrencies. Launched just six months ago, fifty percent of the total coins have been mined. Upon mining completion, only 42 million coins will exist. Its branding might lead an investor to believe it is associated with billionaire Kim Dotcom’s Mega.co.nz, but there is no connection. If you are interested in monitoring the fate of the more speculative cryptocurrencies, this is one to watch. Market Cap: $15.3 million (21.2 million coins).
Namecoin – is based on the Bitcoin source code. A cryptocurrency, Namecoin also acts as a DNS, a decentralize domain name system to buy, register, configure, and sell domains. The first project using Namecoin is the .bit domain. Market Cap: $44.4 million (7.4 million coins).
Peercoin – is a cryptocurrency project forked from Bitcoin that strives to achieve energy efficiency and increased security. Like other cryptocurrencies, initial coins are mined through the more commonly used proof-of-work hashing process. However, unlike other coins, as the hashing difficulty increases over time, users continue to be rewarded with coins generated by the additional proof-of-stake algorithm. Unlike most cryptocurrencies, Peercoin does not have a fixed money supply. Market Cap: $90.1 million (20.9 million coins).
Primecoin – is the first cryptocurrency with non-hashcash proof-of-work. Primecoin’s proof-of-work is based on searching for prime number chains, providing potential scientific value in addition to minting and security for the network. Similar to Bitcoin, Primecoin enables instant payments to anyone, anywhere in the world. It also uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority. Primecoin is also the name of the open source software that enables the use of this currency. Market Cap: $13.8 million (3.5 million coins).
ProtoShares – are used to mine Distribute Autonomous Corporation (DAC) backed cyrptocurrencies while they are still in development by Invictus Innovations. DACs are essentially automated businesses that perform services. And so ProtoShares are stakes in future cryptocurrency platforms. Cryptocurrencies under development are BitShares for asset trading and DomainShares for domain services. Protoshares will achieve a maximum supply of approximately 2 million coins in 2 years. BitShares money supply will be about 20 million coins. Market Cap: $23.1 million (1.1 million coins).
Quark – is a cryptocurrency that focuses on enhanced security, using nine separate rounds of encryption and six different algorithms. Quark is mined by CPU only, with 247 million mined in the first six month and then an additional 1 million units mined every year. Quark coin will continue to release coins in perpetuity at an inflation rate of .5% per year. Market Cap: $47.4 million (246.3 million coins).
Worldcoin – seeks to become the cryptocurrency of choice for merchants and consumers for their everyday transactions. Transactions are fully confirmed in about 60 seconds. Due to frequent block generation (30 seconds), the network supports more transactions without a need to modify the software in the future. At mining completion, 265 million coins will be produced. Market Cap: $20.6 million (35.2 million coins).
Posted in e-commerce & m-commerce, Electronic Payments, Financial Services, Internet Payment Gateway, Mobile Payments, Near Field Communication Tagged with: asic mining, bitcoin, credit card processing, cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency, cryptographic security, decentralized, gpu mining, hashing algorithm, make and receive payments, merchant account, nfc technology, online commerce, payment amount, peer-to-peer, process transactions, QR code, wallet application
