Payments Blog

The typical financial institution has evolved over the years by adding pieces of technology as demands arise, leading to a house of cards. Making changes would likely be hazardous because you simply have no idea what could potentially break as a result. Perhaps you've recently joined a team and have been given the eventful task of maintaining or enhancing an organization that...

The Blockchain is an innovation gaining wide spread attention in the payments & fintech world. It's often explained as being a distributed ledger, which is the "true innovation of bitcoin". This is a half-truth, by itself the 'chain of blocks' does not give rise to any benefits of a blockchain system, such as 'immutability'.

As Apple Pay reaches its two and half year birthday, it's time for us to take a look at how well it's faring with both users and the payments industry as a whole. When it made its U.S. launch in October 2014, it reached a level of success that garnered widespread attention. You can't argue with the numbers: 2 million locations, 1,000 banks, and 5 million registered users....

New US financial regulations, such as the "Dodd-Frank" Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, have enforced many banks in the US, Europe, and Asia to look at ways that can be used to verify audibility and intelligibility of voice recordings. Such recordings contain the activities of traders, wealth brokers and contact center workers.

The Single Euro Payments Area has historically been a method of transferring payments between countries that use the Euro. Now it's attempting to evolve with a new initiative called 'instant payments'. As the name implies, it's a way of transferring funds almost immediately. For example, let's say that I wanted to send you some money. After initiating a transaction, the funds...

Right now, we make an average of 54 person-to-person payments every year. If you consider the number of times you go to buy a cup of coffee in the morning or make a trip to the grocery store, 54 payments doesn't seem like much. Why do we make so few person-to-person payments? If you think about how inconvenient a person-to-person payment is compared to just walking into a...

Scale is probably the biggest challenge that banks face when monitoring payments in a high volume environment. The typical bank has a large number of payment applications. Payments can come from ATM transactions, store purchases, or direct deposits for payroll. When an employer generates payroll, a batch file of transactions comes through to be paid into several accounts. As...

Hands up anyone whose wallet or purse, is straining to contain the ever increasing number of cards we struggle to carry around? For all the advances in FinTech, we are still left with a multitude of cards to carry. Well, strain no longer, because digital cards are seeking to solve this problem by consolidating all your credit cards into a single physical card.

I usually don't mind waiting a few extra minutes in line. Whenever I'm waiting to get my morning coffee, though, each minute is practically an eternity. Even with all of today's available technology, we still have to get in line to check out at the local supermarket, department store, or gas station. Why do we have to queue up when the checkout process itself is so convenient?...

As payments processing continues to move toward real-time settlement, what does this mean for fraud prevention? Do the smaller approval windows mean the attack surface for fraudsters grows? And how can processors tackle this challenge? We discuss this, and more, in the latest FinTech Podcast with John Dunne.

The case encountered

When adding FIPS 140-2 compliance to our Windows software, we encountered an intermittent error:

This error happened randomly on various different machines. Once it happened on a particular machine, it would keep happening on that machine until rebooting. It then went back to being random.

Amazon is stepping up in the battle for your digital wallet. In this post to the FinTech podcast, John Dunne shares his thoughts on what this means to the consumer, the market and other players.

Peer to peer payments may be new to some people, but it's a payment option that has a bright future. John Dunne, Vice President of Products with IR joins us to talk about it in this post to the FinTech podcast.

Transcript

Scott: Peer to peer payments may be new to some people, but it's a payment option that has a bright future. John Dunne, Vice President of Products with IR...

Another six months has passed by and another IR sales kick-off event has taken place. I have posted several times about how much I enjoy being a part of these occasions and this year proved to be no exception. Whether it's simply the opportunity to escape the routine or to be back down in the Denver Tech Center - where there's an ample variety of restaurants to sample –...

As payment options and big data explode, how can this be used to deliver a better customer experience? In this latest FinTech Podcast, John Dunne discusses how one IR customer used this data to offer a differentiated service to delight their customers.

As the payments market evolves, we continue to see momentum with electronic and mobile payments, although the growth in this area is beginning to slow somewhat. While we look at these trends it's important to understand how they're impacted by different geographies with different regulatory requirements and economic conditions.

In Part 1 of this blog post, we discussed how real-time analytics are used to analyze past performance. Prediction involves taking the insight you get by looking at historical data and working out what's going to happen over time. Instead of just looking at whether or not something that's currently happening is normal, we can take a peek hours or even days into the future.

The risk of fraud increases as real-time payments gain widespread adoption. Once you move over to a real-time model, there's typically only a six-second window to decide if a transaction will be authorized. Since there's such a short amount of time to come to a decision, fraud rules can't be overly complex. There's a prime opportunity for us to find new ways to streamline...

I have spent time on the east coast and as in the past, there was something new to observe daily. The conditions of America's highways are atrocious and will be theme of posts published elsewhere shortly. Not only has it become indistinguishable as to whether roads are under repair or simply abandoned, but drivers have become numb to the inconvenience they experience. With so...

My latest white paper is now available on the IR web site. It's called Smarter devices; smarter applications; smarter monitoring. The focus of this white paper is the impact mobility is having on many aspects of commerce and how the consumer is in the driver's seat. When it comes to how the infrastructure from the networks, to the servers, to the databases it is being impacted...

Readers of my blogs know all too well that there's not much I enjoy doing more than driving cars on race tracks. On more than one occasion I have worked something about cars into the story line of my business blogs, as I believe visualizing something dynamic goes a long way to reinforce simple messages.

Ever dined out and wanted to split the check, only to be told 'no split bills'? The service may have been great, the food exceptional and yet with this lack of flexibility when it comes to settling the bill, you are left with a bad taste in your mouth. In this podcast we discuss the ability for payments processors to be able to delight the customer while making life easier for...

I remember when I got my first credit card. It had raised numbers that were meant to be used with a little machine called a manual credit card imprinter. To use the machine, merchants would place the customer's card underneath a piece of carbon paper. A manual slider would then make a click-clack noise as it pressed the raised credit card number into the paper. I haven't seen...

Payments environments are complex; and while there's a fair amount of high level information available, we believe there's an opportunity to provide even more value through producing focused educational content. With that in mind, last week we launched an educational webinar series - House of Cards.

Apple Pay went off to a roaring start almost 18-months ago. In the first 72 hours there were more than a million cards activated with Apple Pay in the US. That's a huge uptake from a card enablement scheme. At that point they became the largest initiative launched in the US so far. Apple Pay has been on quite a journey since then. Not only can you use it for physical in-store...

Amazon Payments is a great example of how dynamic the payments market can be. Amazon began its life as an online bookstore with one-click buying capabilities. They quickly expanded upon their selection of products and eventually decided to make their infrastructure available to others. One key offering they've created over the years is a fully featured payment platform. The...

FinTech is all about innovation, but does innovation have a dark side? In this FinTech Podcast John Dunne, IR Chief Solutions Officer, shares his thoughts on how innovation is also leading to an increased payments attack surface, opening up new fraud opportunities.

PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Wallet are three behemoths vying to be the service you choose as your virtual wallet. What are the differences between each service, and which one is the most promising? Let's take a look.

Purchasing a new car should be a great experience. You get that shiny new car feel and wonderful new car smell. Years of trouble-free motoring, with the latest safety features to protect you and, if you're at that stage of life, your family. It should be a fantastic day when you take that new car off the lot, so why is it such a headache to pull the transaction together to...

In today's digital age, the payments industry is increasingly driven by information and data. Card issuers and acquirers are concerned with gaining better insights into customer behavior. Retailers want a deeper understanding of customer spending patterns.

It seems almost every other day there is a new innovation in payments, but do these innovations always lead to a great outcome? Sure, they may offer great flexibility to the end user, but in many instances it can open up a whole new 'attack surface' for the fraudsters. In this post to the IR-Podcast, John Dunne, Chief Solutions Officer at IR discusses the dark side of...

John Dunne, IR Chief Solutions Office, discussed the emergence of multi-party transactions as consumers and processors demand a better experience. As payment technologies continue to evolve, how will multi-party payment processing change to provide a better experience?

Before the 'customer experience' revolution, there existed the simple notion of 'customer service'. The cornerstone of good, old fashioned customer service was the time honored belief - 'the customer is always right'. There is no better example of the customer being right than when they want to spend their money in a way that is convenient to them. Convenience for the customer...

Since the days of my youth I have been drawn to computers, cars and cycles. Motor cycles, of course, but in general, anything that included an element of speed. Performance too, and yes, to a small degree, risk! As I watch my own career develop over the years I don't think there are many windmills left I haven't tilted. Perhaps jousting at imaginary enemies is a stretch, but...

As long as the credit card has existed, fraud has been a challenge, often as a result of having credit card numbers copied. More recently, the security code was introduced to try and reduce this, but what if virtual card technology could remove the requirements for numbers all together? In this Blogcast, John Dunne, Chief Solutions Officer, shares his thoughts on how the...

Apple Pay has made a significant impact on the payments landscape - offering unparalleled flexibility in how people manage their payments. In this installment from the IR-Podcast, John Dunne, VP of Products, shares his thoughts on how Apple Pay is empowering consumers to embrace technology, like EMV, their everyday card won't allow and what this means for security and the...

Apple Pay wasn't the first digital payment platform in the market, nor was Apple the first to introduce NFC capability to their handsets. But then, they didn't develop the first MP3 player either and we all know how that played out.

Since their inception, credit cards have relied on the unique identified number to process payments. Over time - as fraud increased and with the advent of online shopping - more security measures have been introduced like the CSC and use of the expiry date. But, with tokenization and the introduction of newer payment technology, could we remove card numbers all together?

For those who registered for the 2015 HP Discover event in Las Vegas the folks at Connect, the HP User Group, entered your name into a draw for free tickets on the latest attraction to hit Vegas – the High Roller that is a part of the new open area devoted to restaurants and bars.

When it comes to being first to market, my favorite saying is, "Sometimes the second mouse gets the cheese." I think Samsung put an NFC chip in an Android phone around two years before Apple Pay launched. Even so, you've probably never seen as much publicity, buzz, or even that many people out there using it. If you're going to try to be first to market with an innovation,...

Disruption is happening everywhere. Universal online access, mobile devices and expectations for real-time commerce mean that today's consumers rely on mobile solutions to get things done on the go—anytime, anywhere.

The challenge with the one-in-a-hundred gamble of increasing your margins begins with the need to innovate in order to stay ahead of the competition and grow your market share. In an established market, it becomes a game of percentage points. Each percentage point can be worth millions or even billions of dollars.

It seems as if new payment innovations are unveiled almost every day. There is a rapid rate of change happening, which can at times be difficult to keep up with. Apple Pay, Google Wallet, EMV, NFC – the list, and acronyms, goes on. There is, however, a dark side to these innovations - the people who are always looking for ways to defraud others and steal their money. Every...

Recent articles and commentaries have been focusing on where servers are headed. The question resonating with each story is whether or not servers as we know them are losing popularity. Traditional servers, anchoring many applications and highly visible on the floors of data centers, have been central to the daily operations of enterprises around the world. However,...

Data breaches are becoming all too common. It seems almost daily another serious breach is publicized in the media. It's now nearly impossible to keep them a secret, the damage to reputations and brands can be irreparable.

This post by Jamie Pearson - Product Manager for Payments at IR, first appeared on ACIexpert view.

Mobile payments is the front-line for the battle of the brands. If we were looking at the biggest players a few years ago, we'd be talking about brands like Visa, MasterCard or American Express. The first companies that jump into mind today are Apple or Google. Microsoft proved long ago that whoever owned the desktop would own the entire ecosystem. Now, whoever owns the mobile...

John Dunne, Chief Solutions Officer at IR shares his thoughts on the fine line of innovating safely. FinTech is all about innovation, but how can your organization innovate without opening the doors to fraudsters?

Let's say you and a group of your friends have decided to go to tonight's concert and you've found a great deal online. What does the payment process look like for everyone? This is one of those classic situations where multiple consumers need to make a single transaction with the vendor. There's definitely room for improvement here, and in my recent experiences, we're...

At a recent informal lunch with IR executives in the Denver Tech Center, there was an air of expectation as always when the week just happened to be the last week of not just the month, but the quarter. A very important milestone for any company, particularly a public company such as IR, which is constantly being measured in the court of financial opinion. While it is not my...

HPE is placing heavy emphasis on hybrid infrastructures, digital enterprises and the ideas economy. Messages have been reverberating around the world focused on just how "IT strategy and business strategy are no longer separate; they have become inseparable ... every business is a technology business today."We all have heard how, "Every company … is having to take their legacy...

In the next two years, new rules are taking effect in Australia that will change the way payments are handled. If you're paying a bill or transferring money from one bank account to another, it typically takes three days until the transaction is finalized. After the new changes take effect, it will take a matter of seconds. It's a huge change, and it means that banks are going...

The entire concept of having a card in your pocket that you use to spend money is rapidly becoming obsolete. It just doesn't make much sense anymore to own a dedicated piece of plastic with an embedded chip or mag strip. We're already capable of making online purchases without using a physical card. Making in-person purchases from a mobile device we already carry with us is...

Over lunch this past week I was asked by a potential client about just who were the biggest users of NonStop systems these days. The demographics have clearly evolved with the move away from NonStop by some of the largest stock exchanges and with recent M&A activity in the Telco space, the picture isn't quite as clear as it once was. However, very large users of NonStop...

In part one of this blog, I talked about how banks have been slow to issue cards with chips in them. They don't hold all the blame when it comes to the astonishingly slow EMV rollout, however. Merchants themselves are also well behind the 8-ball in terms of upgrading their infrastructure. In fact, figures show that only about 27% of point of sale terminals are equipped to...

Even though EMV payments are commonplace in other parts of the world, adoption in the US is severely lagging. Payment processors have been required to support EMV transactions since April 2013. That means that we've had the ability to process chip & signature transactions in the US for two-and-a-half years now. That should have been enough time for merchants to meet the key...

The clock continues to count down and October 1^st isn't that far away. Across America, retailers are holding their breath even as card issuers are stepping up their card distribution programs. EMV deployment is but a matter of weeks away from becoming a reality. But how pervasive will deployment be and how big a change will it be for the retail and finance industries? And...

In a competitive market, the winning edge can often come from finding a unique way to deliver a truly VIP customer experience.

I was in Sydney, Australia, the day that Apple Pay launched. Early that morning, I stopped by a convenience store for breakfast on the way to the office. However, because Australia has adopted the chip and pin system, many terminals no longer support older mag strip cards - like my Chase credit card.

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