Autumn Cafiero Giusti

In the U.K., next-level fraud types — involving technologies such as push payments and P2P — are gaining traction now that EMV has been in place for more than a decade.

Millennials may have earned the reputation for doing all of their shopping on smartphones and tablets so they can pay from wherever they are, but a growing body of research suggests that most prefer shopping in brick-and-mortar stores.

The international payments infrastructure has reached a point where consumers can use their cards in many parts of the world as easily as they can in their own country. But finding retailers who can accept all of these cards is a completely different story.

Under its new chargeback rules, Visa retired one of the chargeback codes that merchants almost always lost — "transaction not recognized," formerly listed as Chargeback Reason Code 75.

Microchip implants could be considered the ultimate form of mobile payment — skipping the smartphone altogether in favor of giving people bionic abilities. And a small segment of the population is already lining up to try it out.

Alison Burns feels like a broken record every time she has to give the same spiel to prospective merchant clients: Before you invest tens of thousands of dollars in a new point of sale system, know what you’re getting into first.

The software allows chip card terminals to be operable much faster than with full certification. In other markets outside the U.S., semi-integration is widely used.

As merchants seek out better ways to defend themselves from rampant online fraud, some are pinning their hopes on a recent upgrade to the card brands’ 3-D Secure Authentication technology.

The introduction of EMV is supposed to help reduce instances of fraud. But when a merchant has trouble operating its terminal, unscrupulous customers can take advantage.

When e-commerce fraud spikes, it can be tempting for merchants to pile on more controls and risk turning away otherwise legitimate transactions that appear to be fraudulent. The alternative is often to shut off these controls altogether and leave themselves vulnerable to criminals.

Now that the second holiday season has passed since the U.S. deadline for EMV migration, acquirers are taking stock of the damages that merchants incurred this year to determine the effect of the new technology.

Merchant acquirers say the industry has worked over the course of decades to improve its ethics. But some acquirers report that deceptive practices and dubious tactics still exist, and that the card brands could do a better job at enforcing their own rules.

Merchant cash advances have been controversial because of high premiums. But they can be lucrative for cash advance companies as well as ISOs.

A round of deregulation could loosen restrictions on emerging payment types and technology.

Merchants without chip card readers are reporting that a few malicious customers have figured out how to game the system.

Merchants have been allowed to surcharge in most states for the past three years, but many were not aware. That's starting to change.

Merchants are facing consumer lawsuits stemming from the introduction of EMV-chip card security at the point of sale in the U.S., exposing the issues many stores must contend with now that they are held liable for fraud and chargebacks.

Consumers who have been issued EMV chip cards know how to use them. So it might come as a surprise when merchants equipped with chip card readers instruct their customers to swipe their cards instead.

As merchants prepared to swap out their aging magstripe terminals for modern EMV card readers, acquirers hoped that this widespread demand for equipment would flood ISOs with revenue. But instead, some are finding EMV simply added to their expenses.

It used to be that chargebacks were just another cost of doing business. But with the e-commerce world growing by leaps and bounds, online merchants are experiencing a corresponding spike in chargeback rates that's eroding their bottom lines and jeopardizing their merchant accounts.