Category: Archive | Page 43

FTC Investigating Venmo, Potentially Raising Compliance Interpretation Issues

Venmo has gotten into trouble—of the embarrassment sort—before with aggressive compliance efforts. That was specifically when it created a list of words that could delay transaction processing, such as the word Persian. And PayPal-owned Venmo was hardly alone, with Chase was caught doing similar word scans, as a man who had a dog named Dash discovered.

But the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has now launched a formal investigation into Venmo. With the FTC, phrasing is critical. An investigation is very different than an FTC study, such as the one the FTC launched to look into practices of the PCI Council. PayPal disclosed the investigation in an SEC filing last week. What exactly is being investigated?

PayPal’s New Fraud Rules Are Key For PFs

PayPal announced Wednesday (May 4) a series of payments policy changes, including late-to-the-game restrictions on gift cards, a longtime favorite cyberthief tool. Given PayPal’s massive marketshare, payment facilitators need to watch closely any policy changes the no-longer-Ebay-unit makes. In short, any fraud-related changes that PayPal makes gives political cover for any PF to mimic the move.

The biggest change is that PayPal is now excluding “items equivalent to cash, including gift cards” from its PayPal Seller Protection program. It made a similar change to its Purchase Protection program by “clarifying the exclusion for items equivalent to cash to now include stored value items such as gift cards and pre-paid cards.” A few other items that will no longer be supported by purchase protection—at least as of June 25, when the new rules are scheduled to kick in—are payments on crowdfunding platforms, “gambling, gaming and/or any other activity with an entry fee and a prize” and “anything purchased from or an amount paid to a government agency.”

Visa’s Quick Chip EMV Move, Banking On Perception To Trump Reality

Using the Electronic Transaction Association’s TRANSACT 16 event as a backdrop, Visa on Tuesday (April 19) rolled out Quick Chip for EMV, which the leading card brand described in a news release as being “a technology enhancement that optimizes EMC chip processing and speeds up checkout times.” Unfortunately, Quick Chip isn’t a technology enhancement nor does it optimize chip processing and it certainly doesn’t speed up checkout times. Other than that, the lead of Visa’s news release got it right.

What Quick Chip, however, does do is potentially just as powerful an aid to EMV—or quite destructive to EMV adoption, depending on who is talking—as what Visa claims. All that it does is allow the shopper to remove the card from the card reader much more quickly than current deployments permit. Given that the reader’s retention of the card until the full transaction is complete is behind a very high percentage of both merchant and consumer EMV complaints, this could be seen as a very good thing. Let’s break this down. For almost all transactions, the Quick Chip change won’t accelerate the total transaction time at all. The customer still needs to stand there until all products have scanned and the cashier has been given the final transaction approval. Therefore, from the merchant perspective of “how many shoppers can I push through the line in an hour?” this change is unlikely to help at all. But like so much of what happens in retail, reality never stands a chance against perception.

Chase’s Removal Of ATM Limits Is The Right Idea But For The Wrong Device

Moving more and increasingly complex payments capabilities to ATMs and away from bank branches is a good thing, as we’ve argued before with ATM ApplePay and with MasterCard’s patent application to turn ATMs into full-fledged POS units. But there is a line where it doesn’t make sense and JPMorgan Chase’s current debate about removing per-day cash limits crosses that line.

First of all, unlike mobile devices, ATMs have a very physical limitation: Once the cash that some human loaded into the ATM runs out, the ATM loses much of its most-desired functionality. Sure, it can still accept deposits and reveal balances, but not that much more. To be candid, those particular services are much better handled by a mobile app. (Note: That is true up to the limit of mobile deposits which, I assure you, I’ll get back to shortly.) The ATM’s most powerful function is to dispense cash, as that is something mobile apps can’t do. When the money is gone, the ATM becomes rather pointless.

Finally, An Event Where PF Is The Focus, Not A Footnote

Given how important payment facilitators are to the rapidly emerging and morphing payments landscape in 2016, it’s stunning how few places there are to explore the implications of being a PF today. Plenty of meetings and symposium exist for chatting about payments in general or virtual currencies or mobile payments, but the opportunities to really delve deeply into PF issues are practically non-existent. Until now.

If you can swing by Las Vegas on April 19, PaymentFacilatator.com—in conjunction with Double Diamond Group, Rich Consulting and the Electronic Transactions Association—will present our version of Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About PFs, But Were Too Geeky To Ask. Officially, though, it’s dubbed simply TRANSACT 16’s Payment Facilitator Day – In Depth and On Target.

Visa’s New SMB Rules Add PF Complexities

When Visa recently added more rules on its smallest merchants—PCI Level 4s—it created a sales opportunity for payment facilitators by giving SMBs an even stronger reason to outsource its payments activities. At the same time, it added more complexity to PCI management for those PFs.

Mike Cottrell, head of global sales and marketing at ProPay, tried to put the new rules into perspective for payment facilitators in this week’s PaymentFacilitator.com podcast.

Questions Every New Payment Facilitator Should Ask Its Payments Attorney

Under the latest card brand rules, payment facilitators are being held to exacting requirements. Note that the acquirer is now able to terminate a PF contract immediately with “good cause.” So while state and federal regulation may get the bulk of the attention, those are hardly the only areas of potential rules-enforced disasters.

Visa’s Core Rules, for example, have the PF being “liable for all acts, omissions, cardholder disputes, and other cardholder customer service related issues caused by the Payment Facilitator’s Sponsored Merchants” and “is responsible and financially liable for each transaction processed on behalf of the sponsored merchant, or for any disputed transaction or credit.” MasterCard similarly requires that “the payment facilitator must ensure that each of its submerchants complies with the standards applicable to merchants.” Understanding the limitations and obligations that the card brands impose upon PFs is crucial to ensure the ongoing operations of business.

MasterCard Uses Golf To Demo Virtual Reality

MasterCard, which has sometimes struggled with Internet-of-Things (IoT) efforts, used a golf tournament to (dear readers, please forgive me for what I am about to perpetrate) gulf the digital divide from putting green on a golf course’s putting green. (Whatever you just said, I probably deserved it.)

In all fairness, MasterCard put on an impressive virtual reality demo at its sponsored Arnold Palmer Invitational. “While out on the course, golfers might simply tap their golf glove at the point-of-sale to buy refreshments from the beverage cart,” said a MasterCard statement. “MasterCard is taking it a step further with a concept designed in collaboration with Wearality, an Orlando-based start-up that designs virtual reality glasses and wearables, to allow consumers to identify an item within the experience – such as a golf shirt – and buy it without leaving the virtual world.” Let’s put this into context.

Alibaba-Backed Paytm Gets Into Movie Theater Tickets—But They Have Bigger Things In Mind

India payments powerhouse—and Alibaba-financed—Paytm has cut a deal with India’s largest multiplex movie theater chain (PVR) to sell movie tickets in mobile and online. Why make the move now, with physical movie theaters a quickly dying industry? Those tickets will unleash a lot more one night at the cinema.

Why make a movie theater play now, when even the most aggressive movie industry defenders concede that the shared physical viewing of films will surrender to the better pricing and much stronger convenience of watching films at home or via mobile devices? It’s a smart move. Once shoppers have completed the digital movie transition, mobile payment options will surround them, assuming they haven’t already paid Amazon or Netflix directly. But by tying in physical movie payments with Paytm, they are making the mobile connection in a physical context. When those consumers make the inevitable move to a more digital experience, the account and the mindset will already be established. Better yet, Paytm will know the entertainment habits/choices made by those consumers, allowing for very effective marketing moves later.

Uber’s Deal With Green Dot Illustrates Payments Potential

When Uber and Green Dot last week rolled out Uber Checking By Go Bank, it offered little more than a slightly more convenient way for workers to get paid and to be paid more timely. In payments, though, it can be those little conveniences and small elements of automation that can build into a massive change. And who understands that digital disruption concept better than Uber—and payment facilitators.

The idea is straight-forward: When Uber drivers want to get paid for hours logged, use what Uber is calling Instant Pay. They can log in 24×7 and “cash out your earnings instantly and easily at any time, with no minimum deposit or transaction fees.” The cash is loaded onto their Uber Debit Card. The near-term advantages are that workers control when they get paid—no more waiting until the company dictated date of, let’s say, the 15th of each month—and the account can be isolated. That isolation means that they don’t need to share sensitive bank account details with their employer if they don’t want to.