Tag: Evan Schuman | Page 2

MasterCard’s Payments-Integrated Fridge Leaves Futurists Cold

When MasterCard used the Consumer Electronic Show on Tuesday (Jan. 5) to unveil its Groceries By MasterCard program, it was an all-too-common payments trend: the introduction of an interesting product with long-term potential, but with the initial version being so limited as to be almost pointless.

The idea behind the Groceries introduction is compelling. The concept is that the card brand would integrate payments deep within Samsung’s new Family Hub refrigerator, a first-class example of the Internet Of Things becoming reality. That is until you start asking questions.

Walmart Pay: For The Retailer Who’s Given Up Trying To Get His Way

When Walmart last week introduced Walmart Pay, it was shown to be a simple app that would accept “any major payment type” but it would only work at Walmart. In short, it was the last thing that interchange-fee-hating Walmart wanted to do, especially in the mobile world. MCX’s original vision, a merchant utopia where transactions were done in the non-interchange grab-the-money-directly-from-the-shopper’s-bank-account universe and one app was used at thousands of different merchant stores, was Walmart’s dream.

Mike Cook is the Walmart Senior VP/Assistant Treasurer who initiated the idea of MCX and pushed it so aggressively that many involved—and especially those who chose to not be involved—said the name virtually stood for Mike Cook Exchange. When Walmart Pay was announced, it was Cook whose name was on a statement issued to the media. Said Cook: “We remain committed to MCX, and recently launched acceptance of CurrentC in all of our locations in the Columbus market. We view Walmart Pay and CurrentC as complementary mobile payments solutions, and expect the two to build off each other’s success.” Walmart expects “the two to build off each other’s success”? If Walmart had even the slightest confidence that MCX and CurrentC were going to enjoy even a modicum of success, Walmart Pay wouldn’t have been rolled out. It’s true they will support both—there’s not a lot of reason to not do so—but Walmart Pay is everything Walmart didn’t want to do.

Washington State’s Disappearing New Money Transmitter Rules

On Monday (Dec. 14), the Washington state Department of Financial Institutions said that it was about to change the ways payment processors can get waivers from money transmission licensing requirements. The changes were to kick in Jan. 1. But by Wednesday (Dec. 16), the page with the announcement had vanished, instead displaying a “page not found” error. A search on the state DFI site still returns the page during a search. (Guys, if you’re going to hide a page, don’t forget to clear cache and remove it from site search results. Geez, do we have to tell you everything about hiding stuff from the public?) Fortunately, we copied the text of the page before it disappeared.

Giving processors a mechanism to not being considered a money transmitter is ostensibly a good thing. But like everything else that touches state and federal regulatory efforts, few good things ship without booby-traps. Deana Rich, president of Rich Consulting and also Partner/Director of Strategy for PaymentFacilitator.com, said the risk is not mostly with the state issuing the rules—Washington state in this case—but with other states and how they may choose to interpret that waiver request. “If you say to one state ‘I want to be exempt from your rules,’ other states might say, ‘Hmmmm. Why did you say this to Washington? I’m going to look at you much more carefully now,'” Rich said.

Deloitte: Ignorance Isn’t Bliss. It’s Killing Mobile Payments

On Wednesday (Dec. 9), Deloitte released a major mobile report and concluded that mobile payments is suffering from a payments industry self-inflicted wound: an almost criminal lack of shopper and store associate education about mobile payments.

This is one of those good news/bad news situations. The good news is if the payments industry leaders act smart, this problem can not only be solved, but reversed. Consumer and store employee education will sharply boost mobile payments usage—and that will on top of a continual influx of new mobile shoppers as more people upgrade to NFC-friendly smartphones. The bad news is—when was the last time you saw a lot of payments industry leaders acting smart?

RentMoola Deal Signals Major Upheaval In The Rental World

In the world of payment facilitators, it’s hard to envision a segment more in need of payments updates than apartment rentals—one of the last nature preserves for the American Check. A deal announced on Tuesday (Dec. 1) between RentMoola and MasterCard is a very optimistic sign.

The deal itself is simple, but the potential implications are anything but. The deal positions MasterCard as RentMoola’s preferred payment brand in the U.S. and Canada, which that tenants and condo owners get an unspecified preferred rate “as well as (again, unspecified) rewards with exclusive offers.” This arrangement will include MasterPass “in early 2016,” which presumably means any time before July. Replacing checks with payment cards is a step in the right direction, but where rental payments can really shake things up is when the process bypasses the landlord.

Use Apple Pay, Get Free Rides On The London Underground

The only viable long-term way to get shoppers to change their preferred payments method is to give them a reason to do so. Whether that’s a discount for using NFC rather than plastic or greenbacks, coupons/discounts that are only available using a specific payment method or some other perk, consumers need to get something concrete. This is the bulk of the message that MCX is screaming. Someone at Apple is paying attention.

With its U.K. rollout, MasterCard announced free Apple Pay travel days until the end of the year, but only on Mondays. Technically, the fares aren’t free but riders will have those fares reimbursed. “Customers can travel on Tube, buses, tram, DLR, London Overground and most National Rail services in London,” said a MasterCard statement. “From a standing start to today, over 220 million journeys have been made using contactless bank cards and devices with over one million contactless journeys made every day. Currently, contactless journeys made across all modes make up nearly 25 percent of pay as you go journeys.” More to the point, though, those contactless payments have generated non-travel contactless payments.

WeChat Cuts Global Money Transfer Deal With Western Union

In a deal that could make Tencent-owned social media platform WeChat into a serious payments player, WeChat announced Tuesday (Nov. 17) a deal with Western Union that allows WeChat’s U.S. users to send money cross-border to 200 countries and territories, all while riding Western Union’s rails.

With conflicting laws, industry regulations and security concerns, simplified global money transfers has been a top PF priority. “Consumers are able to fund the money transfer utilizing a debit card, credit card or bank account and easily direct the funds to a Western Union retail agent location around the world, and to a mobile wallet or bank account where available,” said a joint statement from WeChat and Western Union. “WeChat together with its sister product Weixin in China had over 650 million of monthly active user accounts at end of September 2015.”

Wall Street Loves Comparisons, Which Is Why Square Is Driving It Crazy

As PF extraordinaire Square begins its IPO perp walk (aka roadshow), it is seeing consumer media criticism (such as this piece from USA Today) that its numbers are not as strong as so-called contemporaries. The problem is Square’s business model and execution approach is truly different, so much so that there are hardly any comparably-sized companies that are apples-to-apples comparisons—and certainly none that are already publicly-held.This concern is oft-cited by startups who claim to have no competitors, but with Square, the differences are much more significant.

Rick Oglesby, a senior analyst with payments consulting firm Double Diamond Group and a longtime tracker of Square, said he was concerned about the influence exerted by comparisons like the ones USA Today made.”This article keeps talking about tech companies and, if that’s the benchmark, then it probably isn’t that pretty. But if the benchmark is payments companies, Square is very pretty,” Oglesby said. “This is not a Facebook or a Twitter, but relative to the competitors listed in the article—which aren’t really even competitors—I’ll take Square.”

Apple Wants Into P2P Payments, Talking With Chase, CapOne, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bancorp

In an attempt to control as much consumer payments as possible, Apple is in negotiations with J.P. Morgan Chase, Capital One, Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp to launch a bank-account-based P2P payments service, according to a Wednesday report in The Wall Street Journal. If successful, it’s value would be huge to Apple, but not on a per-transaction fee basis. The goldmine would be the data, the equivalent of knowing every check, money transfer and payment card transaction made by millions of its customers.

Beyond the privacy implications of a consumer goods company having so much consumer personal data—on top of whatever health data is being gathered through Apple’s Health app—there are also security concerns. The more avenues of access that exist into a bank account, the more chances there are for a glitch to withdraw more than expected or for the ultra-sensitive bank account routing numbers to leak where a cyberthief could see it.

Home Depot Payment Card Fraud Via HR Records

In a big company, when it’s suspected that someone is misusing company data to steal money from other employees, the first call is supposed to be to human resources. But what if the fraud is being perpetrated by a couple of HR staffers? That’s what happened at Home Depot.

The two Home Depot HR people, Paulette Shorter and Lakisha Grimes, were sentenced to two years and one day in federal prison. According to the feds, the HR staffers used Home Depot personnel files to extract names, social security numbers and birthdates to apply online for Capital One payment cards. They used the names and data not only of Home Depot employees, but of job applicants, too.