Category: Expert Perspectives | Page 5

Podcast: Underwriting Submerchants – How Responsible Are Acquirers?

Last week, we spoke with Deana Rich about the special considerations behind underwriting payment facilitators. This week we take our focus on underwriting in the payment facilitator space a step farther. We talk with Eric Haru, executive vice president, Risk and Compliance, for Merchant e-Solutions about underwriting submerchants.

Payment Facilitators and Risk: How the Market Views Submerchants

There is plenty of evidence that the payment facilitator market will grow significantly over the next few years. There are multiple drivers for this growth, including the belief that the increased complexity of compliance/security requirements for merchants will generate more interest in this payments model.

Although there is general agreement that the growth potential is large, there is a divergent set of opinions on how risky the model is, and how risk needs to be approached.

Are APIs Vulnerable? Two Crucial Places PFs Should Focus Now to Help Mitigate Risk

In the payment facilitator world, APIs are everywhere you look. In many cases, they’re the mechanism that allows the system to work – enabling payments infrastructure to integrate with other functions in a way that solves businesses’ unique problems.

So not surprisingly, API security is a hot topic. Does the use of APIs leave merchants more vulnerable to fraud? What are the special security considerations?

Healthcare PF InstaMed Connects Payers, Providers and Patients

Healthcare in the U.S. is a complicated mix of people and organizations both large and small. Patients navigate through small practices and large healthcare systems as well as individual and employer-provided insurance. Further adding to the complications are very specific regulations protecting patient data and the need to protect the patients’ payment information.

As a payment facilitator, InstaMed strives to connect those disparate parts through a single network. The company claims to connect more than two-thirds of the healthcare market and process tens of billions of dollars a year in healthcare payments.

Yapstone’s Way Of Unlocking Payments For Renters Everywhere

Paying rent is one of the last—and largest—vestiges of paper-check-writing in the U.S. and it’s also remarkably inefficient. Combine that with the fact that rent is often one of the largest monthly costs for the country’s roughly 100 million tenants and it’s easy to see why Yapstone has focused on rent payments as one of its most critical verticals.

“We want to focus on multi-billion-dollar opportunities,” said Yapstone President David Weiss.It’s also important to remember that paying that monthly rent bill is only one part of the tenant—and landlord—financial reality. By selling the service to both apartment dwellers and apartment managers, Yapstone has the perfect audience for a group of services that make the rental process easier and therefore more profitable. “We’re offering a whole range of value-added services such as credit reporting, renters’ insurance that follows that resident from unit to unit,” Weiss said. “This is a powerful series of products that enable us to tap into a $400 billion to $500 billion market.”

To A PF, The World Of Parking Is Doing Anything But Standing Still

Pity the poor standalone parking meter, nestled between communities’ sidewalks and streets. A dozen years ago, five million were scattered across the U.S.. Today, according to the International Parking Institute, no one even bothers to count them any more. New York City is preparing to abandon its 85,000 meters to a PF-fueled mobile system, joining Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Indianapolis and Pittsburgh with similar plans.

The movement is hardly surprising. Many of those metal poles could only handle coins and retrofitting them for magstripe—let alone EMV or NFC—is expensive and short-sighted. To get much of the money from those poles requires a municipal employee/contractor to physically move from pole to pole. The system for fining those who disobey the parking rules is equally inefficient. Enter Jon Ziglar, the CEO of PF Parkmobile, whose company is behind many of those municipal parking meter obliteration efforts. His vision is far cleaner. A mobile app pays for the space and can even text a driver when the time is about to run out. But this gets better. Parkmobile is in pilots today with Ford and BMW to integrate the app directly into cars. Marry the efficiency of a mobile app with a smartcar that can park itself and parking takes on a delightfully 21st Century shine.