POS and Retail

At a recent HCE Payments conference attended by Helixion there was an interesting debate about what form would drive contactless payments forward: mobile or wearables.

First Data and NCR Corp. are flexing their scale muscles in an agreement that brings the technology strength of both companies to the grocery, petroleum and convenience store industries and expands NCR's ATM footprint.

The October 2015 “liability shift” date has come and gone. For years leading up to it finance and payments pundits (and eventually the general population) discussed the impact of this date to force merchants to migrate to EMV-enabled credit cards, from the decades old magnetic stripe standard.

Within less than 12 hours, LoanDepot Inc., a fast-growing mortgage lender, aborted its plan to go public and Fitbit Inc., the maker of wearable devices, priced a secondary offering below the previous day’s close.

Gas stations have until 2017 to upgrade pumps for EMV chip-card acceptance, but first things first — the indoor point of sale at convenience stores at those stations were included in the October 2015 liability shift for merchants.

Around the world consumer adoption for electronic wallets has risen steadily. And mobile wallets such as Apple Pay are finding their ways onto mobile devices around the world.

Apple is reportedly adding person-to-person payments to Apple Pay, based on technology from the bank-run clearXchange network. If this feature comes to market, it will face many competing systems that run on Apple's own handsets.

The EMV migration in the U.S. has been slow, but there are technology alternatives that allow for fast and accurate deployment of chip cards.

MasterCard is integrating software developer Cardtek’s HCEXpert solution to enable Near Field Communication-based mobile payments for customers of MasterCard Payment Transaction Services, a unit of MasterCard.

Western Union has named Elizabeth Chambers as the company’s chief strategy and product officer.

EMV is far from being a new technology. In fact, European countries have been using EMV chip-enabled credit cards and processing terminals for nearly 30 years.

The glacial pace at which card providers and merchants are adding EMV chips to their cards and payments systems benefits no one, and opens new possibilities for card fraud.

Square Inc., the payments startup led by Jack Dorsey, released a 38-minute marketing video in advance of its planned initial public offering.

Over the last several months much has been made about the New York BitLicense.

Electronic payments company PAX Technology has become the main supplier of point of sale terminals for Russia's Sberbank.

Electronic payments technology provider Verifone has entered into an agreement to buy Payment as a Service provider InterCard AG.

Mobile payments is the next “big thing” for consumers. But how can we keep it from becoming so for hackers as well?

Square Inc. is aiming for a valuation of as much as $4.2 billion in its initial public offering, well short of the $6 billion the mobile-payments service sought in its latest funding round.

With Visa Inc. set to merge with Visa Europe, the U.S. company stands to benefit from the experience its London-based counterpart has in mobile and digital payments. It could also supercharge these projects with added resources.

The rollout of EMV is accompanied by increased card not present fraud, but banks can reduce losses using voice biometrics in the call center.