POS and Retail

Connected devices, mobile and new processing standards require a larger technology upgrade than the quick updates of the past, according to Rajesh Venkatraman, director of worldwide payments at IBM.

Chatbots are the next big thing in payments. But a poor in-chat commerce strategy can turn off consumers and create bad user experiences.

Companies involved in content sharing or social media are seeing fraudsters try to create new accounts for their sites with fake credentials through bot attacks.

The European directive is an opportunity for U.S. institutions to update data protection, writes Seth Ruden, senior fraud consultant for ACI Worldwide.

Both merchants and consumers still see the act of making a payment as a barrier and again look to technology to enhance the experience, writes Chris Koide, senior advisor and vice president of financial services for Bambora North America.

The ability to expedite information with payment, specifically remittances, is the real challenge, writes Mike Fortmann, vice president of Southwest Region for NVoicepay.

Usernames, passwords, device authentication and even biometrics have vulnerabilities. Behavioral identity is much harder for crooks to crack, writes Robert Capps, a vice president at NuData Security.

For issuers, higher online and mobile conversion rates should translate to increased payment volume transacted on their cards, but it opens up a new avenue for intense jockeying over top of wallet status, writes Michael Jabbara, director of digital development markets for Visa.

The ransomware threat is likely to get a lot worse before it gets better — if it ever does. And small merchants and ATMs may be the most at risk.

With close to 900 million monthly active users, WeChat is the most popular social app in China, supporting real-time messaging, social networking, e-wallet and many other functions, writes Franklin Chu, managing director for Azoya USA.

Companies and staff should not spend time doing manual work tied to T&E , writes Sunny Manivannan, general manager of Coupa Expenses.

Unless security systems are implemented thoughtfully and provide a comprehensive view of an organization’s end-to-end security position they’re little more than a distraction, writes Luis Rojas, vice president of product management for cyber fraud and risk management at Bottomline Technologies.

Under PSD2, banks are expected to admit all vetted comers, but how they will connect to them is up to the individual parties, writes Raz Rafaeli, CEO of Secret Double Octopus.

If everyone has a universal digital identity, the documents that identify us in the physical world will no longer be necessary, writes Michael Gorriz, group chief information officer for Standard Chartered Bank.

A "smart" token is a regular token on steroids, transmitting the information needed to authorize the transaction together, including enhanced counterpart identity, transaction and invoicing data, writes Marten Nelson, vice president and co-founder of Token.

Square Inc.’s lending business is booming, but Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said that rather than competing with banks, his company is focused on offering traditional banking services to more merchants and consumers who might not have easy access to them.

Shopping and paying for goods with a smartphone or tablet has been a staple of modern consumerism for years, but mobile wallet adoption is just at its early stages, writes Lisa Stanton, president of InAuth.

Not long ago, self-checkout lanes were seen as an encroachment on traditional retail sales, depriving shoppers of the personal touch that comes with interacting with a cashier. Today, this model is under attack from mobile devices, which are both more high-tech and more personal.

In recent years, companies have aggressively reinvented the card-reading dongle to fit their brands and absorb new technologies like EMV and NFC. But few have succeeded in doing away with the dongle entirely.

As a large furniture retailer in South Florida, City Furniture had to decide whether to move quickly to upgrade terminals and avoid the October 2015 EMV chip card liability shift, or stay on track with a process it was already engaged in for a mobile point of sale system in its showrooms.