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

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

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

Payments Security is a Moving Target…Pun intended

“Visa’s participation in FIDO complements its work with MasterCard and American Express to replace account numbers with a digital token for online transactions. The payments industry is hyper-aware of security issues in the wake of the holiday-season Target breach and with the expectation that the ongoing shift to EMV-chip cards will move fraud to e-commerce.”

From Russia…with No Love for MC or Visa

This’ll be interesting to watch.  While Visa and MasterCard are brushing the percentage of income that they derive from Russian card usage (interchange and processing fees)…it could set an ugly precedent for other countries to try to do this.  And you thought Durbin was going to negatively impact your FI’s bottom line.  Wait till Visa

EMV Adoption….quickly doing nothing is not a plan

While I don’t find this as shocking as some might ….anyone remember how long 3DES took and its hurdles to get compliance across the country? I do find it a bit short sighted. Yes, it’s costly. So is doing nothing. VISA & MasterCard have made strides since their unified AID statement in 2013 that has

Are you ready for 2014?

Whether you decide to look at these guides for direction on EMV and Windows 7, use other industry documents available (several free online and from vendors), plan on working with your vendors, or working internally….you MUST have these on your radars to stay in tune, and in compliance, over the next 12-24 months.  You should already