POS and Retail

Square unveiled its first physical store on Thursday to offer hands-on support for merchants using its technology and showcase some of their wares.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is telling agencies and companies that collect or store data to change the way they have been protecting their networks — and its guidance is likely to soon spill over to financial services and payments.

Alternative currency investments are volatile. Another way to look at the market's sustainability is the willingness of participants to stick with this new mode of payments, writes Mariam Nishanian, a representative for Dentacoin, a virtual currency for the dental industry.

Amazon.com Inc.’s proposed $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods Market Inc. won quick U.S. antitrust approval, showing that concerns in Washington about the growing power of technology companies weren’t enough to derail the online retailer’s biggest-ever acquisition.

As marketing becomes more expensive, issuers are under pressure to find new ways to lure merchants, according to Eric Marks and Sean Clark from West Monroe Partners.

Contactless payments today seem to address the slowness of EMV contact without compromising security. And unbeknownst to many, it uses the same security protocol, writes Andrey Tikhonov, senior director of payment technology for Infinite Peripherals.

OnlyID, a joint offering from FIS and Equifax, is meant to become consumers’ single sign-on for bank and retail websites and apps. Longstanding relationships may give it a better shot at achieving network effect than previous attempts.

Amazon casts a huge shadow over the retail industry, but it can be as much an inspiration as a threat.

Payroc has introduced a mobile acceptance program leveraging iTransact, a Utah-based mobile payments technology firm it acquired last year.

Global payment gateway Payworks will partner with Squire to bring EMV chip card payments to the barbershop.

Banking lobbies are still opposed to the Durbin Amendment, which would hurt a free market, writes Mark Horwedel, CEO of the Merchant Advisory Group.

As payments guru David Birch notes, multiple currencies spur competition and innovation, and can reduce stagnation, writes Eric Grover, a principal at Intrepid Ventures.

Many retailers want to beat Amazon at its own game, providing fast and streamlined checkouts that attack the tedium of waiting in line or staring at a card terminal screen for further instructions.

Distribution methods are constantly changing and being altered so that the maximum amount of people can gain access to these unregulated currencies, writes Mariam Nishanian, a representative at Dentacoin.

Removing friction across channels and payment types not only leads to a transformative digital banking experience, it also helps ensure those positive outcomes translate to business success for financial institutions, writes Mark Little, senior user experience researcher for digital channels at Fiserv.

For years, it looked to some like Ma’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. was simply following in the footsteps of Bezos’ Amazon.com Inc., the world’s largest e-commerce company. But when Amazon’s $13.7 billion bid for Whole Foods Market Inc. sent shock waves across the retail industry, Ma looked prescient.

If tokenization can help us recapture liquidity not only for currencies, but by digitizing the value of all assets, time and work in a more flexible, fair exchange, that’s exciting, writes Jason English, vice president of protocol marketing for Sweetbridge.

A bot-powered wave is on the way, and some firms will adapt, others will simply perish. It will be survival of the fittest, writes Beerud Sheth, founder and CEO of Gupshup.

The real lag behind fintech started when banks rested on those online and mobile banking laurels and allowed other players in the mobile space to bypass them in working toward mobile point of sale payment services, writes Jack Jania, senior vice president of strategic payment alliances at Gemalto.

An analysis of a test shows runtime application self-protection (RASP) successfully defends mobile banking apps targeted by BankBot against overlay attacks, writes Frederik Mennes, manager of the security competence center at Vasco Data Security.