Outsourcing Part Deux

Two weeks ago I wrote an article about outsourcing your ATM platform, the pros and cons. It was funny how many private messages and emails I got on the subject. Everyone from vendors, processors, manufacturers, and deployers. Some wanted to have a serious debate, some wanted to share war stories, some wanted to tell me

The Good, The Bad, The Outsourced ATM

Outsourcing is great, until it isn’t. There are benefits to keeping your ATM platform in-house, and benefits to outsourcing it. Many times I hear colleagues state that outsourcing has worked “wonderfully” on their leased or proprietarily-owned ATMs, because it “reduced headaches”, cut down on staff resources, and reduced internal work on initiatives such as ADA

Payments, ATMs, Cards: Five Things I Know I Don’t Know…Sorta

[Originally published on LinkedIn November 4th, 2014] 1. ‘Will EMV at ATMs be ‘ready’ in the United States before the liability deadlines?’ Maybe. The domestic liability shifts (remember that the liability shift for inter-regional Maestro ATM transactions actually went into effect on April 19, 2014) for MasterCard are scheduled for October 2016. Visa’s liability shift

I’m No Apple Chearleader…but MCX Can Take a Hike

[Originally published on LinkedIn on October 30th, 2014] As someone working in the FI industry, it’s definitely been a busy few years, and a hurricane two months. Within the span of 14 days the Home Depot breach erupted, I was in DC for the Mobile & ATM 2014 Summit, ApplePay was announced, I presented PCI-DSS/ATM/PTS

Digital Education: Learning to Fly or Jump, Before You’re at 30k Feet

It’s been less than six months since Walmart in our area flipped the switch for EMV credit cards, and so far I am unimpressed with how they’ve handled it: [WM Cashier] “That’ll be $xx ma’am/sir, go ahead and swipe your card.” [Customer does so] [WM Cashier sees the ‘alert’ on terminal screen and franticly grabs

Rapid Payments Changes, But To Where?

The old saying goes, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” The band YES [I know….I just dated myself] famously sang, “Change changing places.” Another anonymous intellectual once said, “The only thing we can count on is change.” Flying home from a long two weeks of work travel and wondering to myself

Payments Future: Dealing With a Growing Threat

Bouncing from one conference to another the past week, first in DC and then in San Antonio…and I am still reading through my notes, and reminiscing about all the buzz around payments at the 2014 ATM&Mobile Summit, as well as the 2014 TAG National Conference with Diebold. If you get to go next year, I

Losing Site (Sight) of What Your (You’re) Trying to Say…Maybe I’m Looking at It Wrong?

Baby blue, a little smaller than a Bible, and about 2″ thick? What in the world am I describing? Well, if you ever had to stand at a chalk board [yes…I know that dates me] and diagram a sentence you know exactly what I am talking about: a grammar textbook. From my first days in

Duck, Cover, and Move Forward: The Card Brand Battle Rages On

Discover Offers Discount to Banks in Bid to Gain on Visa, MasterCard “The reduced pricing for Discover’s signature debit card network will apply to the more than 4,000 banks that are members of the American Bankers Association.” It’s funny….when VISA or MC has done this publicly with banks and merchants in the past, they were

The Windows are Cleaned. Now What?

Having ‘survived’ the conversion to Windows 7, not to mention upgrading to Diebold’s new Agilis 3.0 and a total processing conversion of PIN and ATM, for our ATM fleet and PIN debit processing, we are left looking out at the landscape to ask, “What’s next?” Speaking to many colleagues either on a one-2-one basis, or