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Starbucks Accelerates Mobile Payments Leadership by Choosing Square for Payments

8/08/12 Square

Starbucks and Square announced a broad innovative partnership to bring the best possible payment experience to both sides of the Starbucks counter. By accepting Pay with Square, Starbucks is giving millions of customers another way to enjoy a quick and seamless payment experience at approximately 7,000 Starbucks stores. The partnership will also accelerate the ability of small businesses to grow with Square’s innovative technology and a stronger and more widely available network.

Here’s How Mobile Payment App Square Will Process Your Bucks at Starbucks

8/08/12 AllThingsD

In a sit-down with a small group of journalists this morning in New York City, Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz and Square creator and CEO Jack Dorsey answered questions about what the tie-up means for both companies, as well as how it has the potential to revolutionize payments for customers. Both stressed that Starbucks’ current register system isn’t going anywhere — for now — but adding Square to the mix adds a whole new layer of payments that might leave some people wondering how, exactly, it works.

What's Missing in the Starbucks-Square Deal? A Lot

8/08/12 BTN

Starbucks' $25 million investment in Square says a lot about the mobile payment provider's appeal to larger merchants — but the coffee chain's decision to leave out some of Square's technology also speaks volumes. Starbucks' investment is certainly a major vote of confidence in Square's abilities, but the agreement focuses almost entirely on Square's consumer-facing mobile wallet, Pay with Square, instead of the systems Square developed for merchant use.

The Campaign to Digitize Your Wallet Is Intensifying

8/09/12 The NY Times

This week, Starbucks joined forces with Square, a technology start-up that lets you pay for things with a smartphone. Coming from a company whose cafes seem to be on every corner, that’s a powerful endorsement. Does that mean your phone will soon replace your wallet? That’s hardly certain, because any company offering mobile payments faces a big challenge: convincing people that paying with a phone is safer and more convenient than using cash or a credit card.

Durbin Calls $6.6 Billion Visa Swipe-Fee Accord Bad Deal

8/07/12 Bloomberg

U.S. Senator Richard Durbin, who won federal limits on debit-card swipe fees, said merchants should “think hard” before signing a $6.6 billion settlement with Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc. and banks over credit-card fees. “This is a stunning giveaway to Visa and MasterCard,” Durbin, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, said in remarks last week, according to the Congressional Record. “This is a bad deal, but it is not a done deal. The merchant plaintiffs still have to decide if they will support it.”

Michael Campbell Joins The Strawhecker Group as Issuing & Acquiring Risk Management Expert

8/10/12 TSG

TSG will utilize Campbell to help its clients create strategic opportunities and minimize risks in the rapidly changing payments industry.

TSG, a management consulting company focused on the electronic payments industry, announces the addition of Senior Associate, Michael Campbell to the roster of veteran payment professionals. Campbell, with more than 20 years of experience in credit management, portfolio management, credit policy and merchant data security has held senior risk management positions at First Data Corporation, Chase Merchant Services, Chase Paymentech, Barnett Bank and most recently WorldPay. At TSG Campbell will focus on strategic engagements with large acquirers, card brand compliance issues and international processing engagements.

ETA Launches Committee To Guide Emerging Mobile Payments Industry

8/09/12 ETA

The Electronic Transactions Association, the trade association of the global electronic payments industry, today launched its new Mobile Payments Committee, an industry-wide task force of representatives from top companies in the innovative market of mobile payments, including all four major mobile network operators – AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. The Mobile Payments Committee will develop and implement industry-wide solutions to the complex policy and business issues surrounding the emergence of mobile payments in the U.S and globally.

ETA Helping ISOs Embrace Tech Companies

8/08/12 ISO & Agent

Until recently, the acquiring industry viewed Google Inc. and other high-tech firms as interlopers in the payments business. Now, acquirers are courting those very companies as potential business partners. The shift is occurring because independent sales organizations are growing confident that the value of their relationships with merchants will become apparent to the new players. Besides, it’s useless to resist the march of technological change.

SURVEY: U.S. Merchant Adoption of Contactless Mobile Payment Technology Using NFC

The Strawhecker Group, in collaboration with the University of Nebraska at Omaha, is conducting a survey to analyze the acceptance of contactless mobile payments, using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, by U.S. merchants. Upon completion of this study you will be emailed a summary of the final results as an incentive for your participation (if you add your email at the conclusion of the survey).

Follow this link, you will be redirected to take the survey.

Paying with your phone: TechRadar Tests the Visa Olympic Samsung Galaxy S3

8/09/12 TechRadar

trial to see whether the UK is ready to ditch cash in favour of paying using phones - but is the country ready yet? We joined 800 others – including Olympic athletes – in using the official Olympics phone from Visa: a Samsung Galaxy S3 equipped with a dedicated payment app for three months, with £50 of credit to try out in the Olympic Village and other contactless-enabled outlets.

Jobless Claims Fall in Sign U.S. Job Market Mending: Economy

8/09/12 SFGate

Fewer Americans filed applications for unemployment benefits last week, a sign the labor market may keep improving after hiring picked up in July. Jobless claims unexpectedly dropped by 6,000 to 361,000 in the week ended Aug. 4, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 43 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for an increase to 370,000.

AmEx Flap Is an Embarrassment, But Not Likely to Hurt Google Wallet

8/08/12 Digital Transactions

Regardless of how talks between Google Inc. and American Express Co. turn out, it isn’t likely AmEx will shut down its cardholders’ access to the online search giant’s newly overhauled mobile wallet. Indeed, much of the discussion now is likely focused narrowly on the use of the AmEx brand, says Rick Ogilvy, a senior analyst at Aite Group LLC who follows mobile payments. “A lot of it has to do with protecting [the AmEx] brand and how it is being used,” he tells Digital Transactions News.

Want to Do Mobile Payments? Here’s a Free Tablet

8/07/12 Bits

A number of start-ups are trying hard to convince the world that the ability to pay for things with a phone is something we actually need. The latest example is GoPago, a company in San Francisco that is trying to lure merchants with free tablets. The pitch goes something like this: Merchants, especially restaurant owners, often resist new payment tech because they don’t want to deal with the fuss of hiring a tech person to set things up or trouble-shoot. And they’re too busy to deal with it themselves.

Mobile Payment Options Grow for Small Companies

8/06/12 CNBC

If all goes as planned, customers of family-owned Ben White Florist in Austin can start buying flowers this month by swiping a smartphone at checkout. Representatives working for Isis, the mobile-payment company behind the technology, have been working with the shop's owner, Michael Martinez, to prepare for a new mobile payment system that can accept most credit cards, including Amex and Discover. That the system is free for now — subsidized by Isis — helped persuade Martinez to give it a try.

Prepaid Cards Are Fast-Living, Hard-to-Peg Animals

8/07/12 American Banker

That would be the nature-special version of the life of the prepaid card, as adapted from a more sober Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia report issued Tuesday. The Philadelphia Fed analyzed over 280 million prepaid card transactions on 3 million cards issued by Meta Payment Systems, a division of Meta Financial Group (CASH), collecting data on how the cards are used, at what cost and for what duration.

First Data Releases July 2012 SpendTrend®

8/09/12 First Data

First Data Corporation, released its First Data SpendTrend® analysis for the full month of July 2012 compared to July 2011. SpendTrend tracks same-store consumer spending by credit, signature debit, PIN debit, EBT, closed-loop prepaid cards and checks at U.S. merchant locations. Consumer spending growth remained sluggish due to ongoing concerns about the economic recovery. Year-over-year dollar volume growth of 5.7% represented the slowest growth observed over the past year.

TSYS Forms Joint Venture with Central Payment Co.

8/09/12 TSYS

TSYS announced today the formation of a joint venture with Central Payment Co., LLC, which will continue to do business under its current name. TSYS owns 60-percent of the joint venture, and it will operate as a TSYS affiliate. “This joint venture with Central Payment enhances our distribution model, with its strong sales agent channel made up of more than 700 active, independent agents,” said Mark Pyke, president of TSYS’ Merchant Services segment.

Heartland Takes Aim at POS Fraud

8/09/12 Bank Info Security

Heartland Payment Systems, a payments processor that suffered a massive breach in 2009, is now taking steps to help the merchants that it serves enhance security. In the wake of recent point-of-sale breaches at two Heartland clients - restaurant chain Penn Station and a locally owned Mexican restaurant in Winchester, Ky. - Heartland executives say they are taking a proactive approach to security.

MasterCard Canada Releases First SpendingPulse Report

8/09/12 The Sacramento Bee

MasterCard Canada made its first public release of insights from SpendingPulse, a product of MasterCard Advisors, which highlights total retail sales - across all payment forms including cash and cheque - as well as sales in four key retail categories: e-Commerce, Grocery, Department Stores and Gasoline. "SpendingPulse reports are unique value-adds to decision-makers who want an immediate pulse-check on the Canadian market."

NFC Company ViVOtech Unloads Its Reader Business, Will Focus On Software Going Forward

8/06/12 Tech Crunch

In late July, NFC industry news site NFC Times reported that ViVOtech was shutting down. The company soon after released a statement explaining that it wasn’t closing up shop, but it was “restructuring its operations.” Today, ViVOtech has made progress on that front: it has unloaded its reader business to ID TECH, and says its focus will now be on making software.

TransFreedomTM, Innovative Credit Card Processing Pricing Package, Can Save Merchants Time and Money

8/09/12 TransFirst

A merchant’s credit card processing statement can be long, complicated and time-consuming to reconcile. TransFirst®, a leading provider of secure transaction processing services and payment enabling technologies, has responded to merchants’ needs with TransFreedom, a pricing solution that combines many of a merchant’s credit card processing fees into one single fee – reducing time spent, paperwork and payment processing expenses.

VeriFone Selected for Contactless Payment Rollout in Mexico City

8/09/12 BusinessWire

VeriFone Systems, Inc., will provide the merchant payment solutions in the initial phase of the first major contactless payment rollout in Mexico City by the Mexican bank Banamex, which begins today. Banamex, part of Grupo Financiero Banamex and a member of Citi, is implementing a full-scale contactless payment deployment. In the first phase, several thousand VeriFone contactless-enabled card acceptance systems will be deployed to 1,900 merchants in the Mexico City metropolitan area.

ISO Harbortouch America Revamps Website

8/06/12 The GreenSheet

Bellevue-based Harbortouch America, one of the nation’s leading providers of Point of Sale (POS) Systems for retail and hospitality industries, has launched information on several new user-friendly features on their website. Some of these enhancements include online access to its POS management and reporting tool know as the Lighthouse Feature and the launch of the more powerful All in One (AIO) Elite System.

Bernanke Boards the Happiness Bandwagon

8/07/12 CNNMoney

Whenever we try to assess the health of the economy, we usually go by data sets that look at large groups, such as Gross Domestic Product, or GDP. But in recent years, a growing number of economists have suggested that GDP might not capture entirely how individuals are doing or what makes their lives better. They say they may need to develop new measures that focus on "well-being" or happiness.

It’s Official: Pre-Authorization Data Is In Your PCI Scope

8/06/12 StorefrontBacktalk

Like many QSAs, I frequently get asked whether pre-authorization cardholder data—that is, card data written on paper or stored electronically before the transaction is authorized—is in scope for PCI. My answer has always been that if you have any cardholder data, you must handle it in a PCI-compliant manner. That advice applies whether the data is pre-, post- or somewhere in the middle of the authorization process.