Tag: MasterCard | Page 8

Exploding Internet Access Plus Ubiquitous Smartphone Use Equals Digital Payments Boom

All the digital payments innovation will pay off in some crazy numbers soon, says a report from non-profit think tank The Demand Institute, which is run by Nielsen and The Conference Board.

That strengthens the future of PFs worldwide, as cashless payments could result in over $10 trillion in additional consumer spending over the next 10 years, the report says. That figure is hand in hand with the report’s assertion that by 2020, the Internet will be available to over 1.2 billion more people than use it today. Much of that access will be through smartphones.

Facebook Dives Deeper Into Payments Under David Marcus, Competing As A PF, Again

The only thing separating Facebook from being a true payment facilitator is it registering as one. The social media giant today announced users of its Messenger app can now send payments from within the app to make purchases from sites who interface with the app using bots.

Facebook is working with Stripe, Braintree and PayPal, but also appears to be directly enabling acceptance of Visa, Mastercard, and American Express to make this happen, and Messenger users can store their card info in Messenger for use at checkout. This can be combined with the ability of brands being able to buy ads that take clickers into Messenger where their card info is saved. David Marcus, Facebook’s vice president of messaging and a former payments executive, has raised the Messenger user base from 700 million monthly active users to 1 billion in a year.

Mastercard And Visa Gain Strength, But Did PayPal?

The deal between Mastercard and PayPal announced Sep. 6 was different for a day than the Visa-PayPal partnership announced in July. Mastercard spokesperson Robyn Cottelli says being a payment choice in PayPal’s checkout is crucial, but not the only draw.

“Our thoughtful approach to the partnership with PayPal was not just focused on prominence as a payment option, but going beyond what we’ve seen Visa announce to drive further value for Mastercard and our partners,” Cotelli tells paymentfacilitator.com.

Tech Mobile Contactless Marketing Could Turn The U.S. EMV Frown Upside Down

More than a decade after the U.S. payments community tried and failed to make contactless payments work, EMV resentment and a well-funded mobile payment app movement may make U.S. contactless payments not merely viable, but vibrant—perhaps as soon as late 2018.

One result could be that the U.S. adopts mobile contactless payments before and in higher numbers than chip cards as tech giants like Apple and Samsung and Google blitz consumers with mobile payment app marketing that was not a factor when the country tried contactless a decade ago.

India’s Razorpay Onboards A Month Faster Than Rivals

Onboarding merchants in less than a week, nearly a month quicker than what the CEO says is the industry standard, Indian payment facilitator Razorpay has used that impressive stat to sign up more than 8,000 Indian merchants, including mom-and-pops and global chains such as Papa John’s. Not bad for a company that wasn’t even a Mastercard payment facilitator until last year.

A member of Mastercard’s Start Path program since 2015, Razorpay is precisely how the card brand envisions signing 40 million merchants by 2020. The challenges are as plentiful as the opportunities.

Visa Puts Signature On Skirmish With Retailers

Visa filed a suit against Walmart June 30, the latest volley in a legal shootout with large retailers over EMV, chip-and-PIN and signature policies. “To me, it’s a clear escalation in the battle, said Rick Oglesby, president of AZ Payments Group and a partner at Double Diamond Group. “It’s never a good thing to be wrapped up in a public dispute with one of your largest and most influential customers, and the networks versus Walmart has been ongoing for many years.”

The suit claims Walmart surreptitiously tested a process in which shoppers were not given the choice to verify their Visa debit card purchases with a signature. It’s the most recent salvo in a battle among Visa and large retailers over the use of either signatures or PINs to verify transactions.

Kroger Details Its Fun-Filled Visa Negotiations

Have retailers suddenly started developing backbones, in terms of pushing back on payments companies? On Monday (June 27), Kroger sued Visa about how it was implementing EMV, in much the same way that Walmart and Home Depot have done. This follows Walmart kicking Visa out of Canada and a major German company rejecting PayPal after PayPal apologized and reinstated it. Did somebody spike the NRF water fountains with super-caffeine or something? Or have merchants decided that they can push back on payments giants with little risk of meaningful pain?

EMV rules seems to have been the PIN straw that broke the POS camel’s back, as even Apple Pay has suffered performance degradations following EMV migrations. The big picture arguments about security—that it’s blindingly obvious that PIN is far more secure than signature—are obscured by the reality that this is really a fight about interchange fees. And the EMV argument that the path to PIN must be glacially slow or else American consumers will freak out from the change, despite the fact that most are quite used to PINs from ATMs and debit cards, is frighteningly valid. And here it is in the land of EMV rules that grocery giant Kroger makes it stand.

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.

Class Action Merchant EMV Lawsuit Could Make The EMV Transition A Lot Messier

EMV has always delivered more than its fair share of headaches and surprises—and this week even has the MasterCard CEO doing some EMV griping of his own—but a class action lawsuit filed last week is raising yet another troubling EMV question. Is the liability shift appropriate if merchants have done everything in their power to embrace EMV? If backlogs from the card brands are why a merchant doesn’t have an EMV greenlight, is it fair to punish them with the liability shift?

Like every payments issue, there are details to be dealt with. Did the merchant submit all paperwork in a reasonable timeframe? One can’t file 10 minutes before the deadline and then blame the backlog for a lack of approval.
Still, it’s an interesting question. And the lawsuit from B&R Supermarkets and Grove Liquors goes further than saying that the backlog was unexpected or larger than expected. The filing accuses the card brands—and other payments players—of deliberately being slow, in an attempt to push off liability costs on as many merchants as possible, regardless of their EMV efforts.

Patent Wrap: MasterCard’s Plan To Turn An ATM Into A POS

In this week’s look at interesting payments patents issued and/or applied for, PayPal and MasterCard inventors are our payments patent people with a trio of invention applications all filed on Feb. 18. MasterCard’s filing envisions using all of those strategically ATMs for a lot more than cash-dispensing. This makes even more sense given that cash-dispensing will become increasingly unnecessary as in-person purchases go digital.

Meanwhile, PayPal wants to aggregate purchases from multiple merchants in one quasi-session. And MasterCard also has an idea for a way to use payment data to identify physically-proximate consumers with similar buying patterns.