Payment standards

Because of its large U.S. network of about 14,000 fuel stations in the U.S., Royal Dutch Shell often sets the tone for industry movements in technology, including the EMV conversion, which faces an Oct. 1 liability shift.

New messaging protocols calls can meet crooks at the pass, says FIME's Jean Fang.

It seems the payments industry is once again pushing liability to the merchants with no plans to hold anyone else along the payments ecosystem accountable for ensuring that viable solutions are available, says the Merchant Advisory Group's John Drechny.

Two of the largest U.S. fueling station chains are adopting technology that separates the act of pumping gas from the transaction — and in the process, enabling that the purchase of fuel to become a gateway to in-car shopping.

The future of brick and mortar retail is somewhere in the swamps of Jersey. Buried beneath a virtual sea in a place once called Xanadu is an underwater version of New York, a nautical Times Square where marquees scream “Piranha of the Opera,” and “Krill Grill.”

The move to dump passwords in favor of more flexible authentication will likely happen in clusters, with schools providing many of the factors necessary.

The National Retail Federation's annual conference, taking place this week in New York, is home to many innovations that could change the way merchants accept payments.

The specific impetus for the Federal Trade Commission's inquiry into Visa and Mastercard's debit transaction routing processes is not entirely clear, but it likely stems from the effect that advanced payments technology has had on Durbin amendment compliance.

Samsung's upcoming XCover Pro phone, which can accept contactless payments without add-on hardware, is the first of what Visa hopes will be many devices capable of natively handling NFC payments.

After getting a reprieve from a 2017 deadline, gas stations now have less than a year to upgrade to EMV security at the pump — and the card brands aren't showing signs that they will be willing to postpone this mandate another time.

The NFC Forum, the global standards body and advocacy association for the use of NFC, released the specifications to improve communication speed and the ability to use NFC in areas in which "noisy radio environments" might cause interference.

France’s Orange Bank, the online bank launched in 2017 by telco Orange, is expanding its mobile payment app’s reach by adding Google Pay through an integration via Wirecard.

Adoption of contactless is already well under way, and in a few years consumers will likely look back and recall the bad old days when valuable time was taken up waiting for transactions be processed and wonder how they ever coped without the speed, ease and convenience of contactless payment cards, writes Fiserv's Jamie Topolski.

Lawmakers in Germany have passed a law that would require Apple to open the iPhone’s NFC chip to other mobile payment providers.

By using host card emulation, issuers can gain more control over their own mobile payment apps, says FIME's Christian Damour.

Discover Financial Services has promised to issue all new and replacement cards in the contactless format.

The Salvation Army is rolling out contactless payments technology at its 25,000 red kettles nationwide to combat the declining amounts of cash in donors’ pockets.

The complexity of converting fuel pumps' hardware and software to accept EMV chip cards was such that the card brands gave pump manufacturers and gas stations an extra five years to comply. Now one year is left — and those complexities haven't diminished.

Google's $2.1 billion deal to buy Fitbit is primarily a hardware play. But it also brings Fitbit Pay under Google's umbrella — potentially repairing part of Google's fragmented mobile and wearable payments ecosystem.

If time seems to move faster when a payments compliance deadline is looming, then owners of gas station/convenience stores in the U.S. will feel like October of 2020 will be upon them in no time.