Editor's Note: Both this and the previous post talk about RevolutionMoney and PayPal's P2P Money Transfer platforms. I know I haven't talked a lot about it on the blog, as we're working hard to bring the more secure and thus lower interchange fees of PIN Debit and Credit to the web, but...
HomeATM's Personal Swiping Device can be used to send money to anyone anywhere in the world...more securely and for less money than Western Union, PayPal, (see previous blog post) Visa, MasterCard and (I suspect but have yet to acquire the numbers for) Revolution Money. Frankly, I believe it to be not only the most secure and least cost intensive, but also the easiest way to send money from one party to another. I'll touch about this more in the near future, but with the RM and PP articles being posted back2back I thought I'd talk a little P2P B4 you read the post... JBF
More later on HomeATM's Person to Person Money Transfer service...
ST. PETERSBURG — Revolution Money Inc. has raised more than $80 million in capital, including $20 million over the summer, as the startup firm strives to make its mark in the payments industry.
The money is funding operations, customer growth and technology development, said Darren Thompson, CFO at Revolution Money, a fast-growing firm that in one year has expanded to more than 100 employees, 85 percent of them at its downtown headquarters.
Revolution Money says its RevolutionCard credit card and MoneyExchange online person-to-person money transfer product cost less and provide greater security than better-known brands such as MasterCard, Visa and PayPal.
Investor interest has been piqued because there’s strong demand for cheaper payment methods in a cost-conscious and credit-crunched economy, said Adil Moussa, an analyst at Aite Group LLC. “I’m not surprised by how they [raised capital] because there is so much demand for alternative payments,” Moussa said.
Editor's Note: Want to see (according to TechCrunch) 50 companies most likely to survive the economic downturn? Then click here. Keep in mind, it's in "money raised" order, which doesn't mean a thing considering that biometric payment processor Pay By Touch...raised enough money to be SECOND on TechCrunchies Top 50 list...(if they were still in existence).
PayPal, the online payment system, is launching a digital ad campaign to attract more customers to its person-to-person money transfer service. It will target men's magazine websites such as FHM, Nuts and Zoo.
The viral campaign called "I'm not a charity" includes email, a microsite and online ads developed by Tullo Marshall Warren (TMW). The ads take a comic approach with headlines such as "£10 means nothing to you, but it could mean the world to little John".
The ads will feature in men's magazine sites and also target younger audiences with emails, encouraging recipients to send funny customized appeals to their indebted friends for a repayment.
The email receivers can upload their images and develop their own campaign addressed to their indebted friend. The online ads are in the form of a poster pasted on a tattered cardboard with bold graphics.
Some PayPal members discovered the online-payment service had "double-dipped" their accounts. PayPal waited until October 1st to post the problem on its Announcement Board, explaining that some PayPal Debit Card transactions that were initiated on September 26th were debited twice due to a processing error. "We have begun processing the corrections for the duplicate payments and they should appear in your PayPal account in the next few days. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and are working to resolve this issue as soon as possible."
PayPal spokesperson Michael Oldenburg said the company would be communicating with affected customers individually by email and was working to correct the duplicate payments in the next few days. He declined to reveal how many accounts were affected by the glitch.
Meanwhile, sellers have been wondering whether eBay has issued credits yet for a glitch that caused items listed or revised on eBay between September 17 - 19 not to appear eBay Search. eBay announced the credit on its Systems Announcement Board and subsequently removed the post. Some sellers complain that they've been unable to reference it when speaking to eBay customer service representatives, some of whom are reportedly unaware that eBay promised the credits. eBay has not responded to inquiries about the credits.
Meanwhile, eBay Australia announced that buyers are having trouble redeeming vouchers.
Heart Health Inc. Appoints Innovator with 25 Patents to Advisory Board
(Marketwire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) MONTREAL, QUEBEC, October 2 / MARKET WIRE/ --
Heart Health Inc. (OTCPK: HHEL) is pleased to announce that the Company has appointed Kenneth G. Mages, the founder and CEO of HomeATM Payments and a contributing developer of the Heart Health Monitor (HHM), to its advisory board.
He will assist the company with research and development, writing patents, and developing new applications for the HHM as it moves toward FDA approval.
Mr. Mages graduated from the University of Illinois with a B.A. in Business Administration and Computer Science in 1978. He has more than 25 years of experience in leadership positions serving as CEO HomeATM and KGM Graphics Inc., CTO of Planetportal.com, and Director of BioBank LLC before it became HomeATM. He has contributed to the filings of 25 patents, including one for a method to enable secure transmission of PINs over the internet, and another for a DOS-based system to digitize artwork for the comic industry.
"We are honored to have Mr. Mages join our advisory board. Fundamentally, as a contributing developer of the HHM, his expertise will help us move forward with its design, and his vast experiences in diverse leadership roles will be an enormous asset in our abilities to achieve our ultimate goal of revolutionizing the heart monitoring industry," stated Michael Kron, Chairman and CEO of Heart Health, Inc.
Heart Health Inc. continues to move forward with the development and marketing of its GSM and USB enabled Heart Health Monitor. This device will allow patients to instantaneously e-mail or print their EKG results, enabling a trained medical professional to make a quicker diagnosis of the user's heart condition.
About Heart Health, Inc.:
Heart Health, Inc. is a holding company focused on the development and marketing of innovative, cardiovascular medical device products. The Company intends to revolutionize the way in which people monitor the health of their hearts using newly acquired products such as the Heart Health Monitor.
Safe Harbor Act: This release includes forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involves risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, the impact of competitive products, the ability to meet customer demand, the ability to manage growth, acquisitions of technology, equipment, or human resources, the effect of economic business conditions, and the ability to attract and retain skilled personnel. The Company is not obligated to revise or update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this release.
Contacts: Heart Health Inc. Investor Relations 1-866-THE-APPL(E)
Some people say there's a woman to blame, but I know...it's my own damn fault - Jimmy Buffet
"PIN's Blame Abroad...They're Not Smart...Oui Are"
After 3 years of dismal results from the highly heralded Chip and PIN platform, which embeds circuits (Smart card) onto the card, is this the beginning of a propaganda-laced campaign by APACS aimed at deflecting criticism off their (what might be aptly renamed "Phish and Chip") program?
According to every published article I've read, the common denominator is "It's not their fault...it's the countries that haven't followed their lead and incorporated a Chip and PIN system". So they're waiting for everyone else to "get smart" cards and then it'll be OK. Unfortunately for APACS, the US has absolutely no designs on incorporating that system, thus it looks like APAC'SOL."Sorry about that chief"...
Here's a collage of information from various UK media outlets spewing their spin on the failed ability of Chip and PIN to reduce fraud.
According to APACS, fraud losses for debit and credit cards increased to £307 million in the UK - compared to £267 million over the same period last year. This is a 13 percent rise.
The total amount lost to the fraudsters reached a record £301.7 million in the first half of the year - more than before chip and pin security was introduced in 2006. £121.2million - or 40 per cent of the total - involved fraud committed on cloned or stolen UK cards using cash machines abroad, a 190 per cent rise in just three years.
The figures were boosted in particularby overseas fraud, which made up 40 percent of the total. Phone, internet and mail order scams were another pressure point, fraud from which rose 18 percent to £162 million.
While card fraud fell from £219.5million in 2005 to £209million in the first half of 2006 following the start of chip and pin, it rose to £263.6million in 2007.
Although the banking industry insisted that card fraud would have continued to rise sharply if chip and pin had not been introduced, in reality it has provided only a temporary halt, with fraudsters finding new - and more lucrative - ways to operate.
Last month, police warned that many gangs have installed fake chip and PIN readers in small shops and petrol stations to record the information on a credit card's magnetic stripe. A security camera then notes the customer's PIN before the card is cloned and used at a cash machine, usually abroad. Police suspect the money raised is not only fueling the activities of international criminal gangs involved in drug running and prostitution, but also terrorism
However, Sandra Quinn, of APACS, insisted: 'Criminals continue to target those areas where we do not currently have the security benefits of chip and pin, causing increases in fraud abroadand phone, internet and mail order shopping fraud.
"Fraud abroad will be more difficult for criminals to commit as more countries roll-out chip and pin. (Last I heard, the US isn't going to spend the billions of dollars needed to roll out that program, so I would translate that as "Fraud abroad will continue to be easy for criminals...)
"To help tackle online fraud, we urge shoppers to protect their computer with anti-virus software, only use secure websites and use systems that make cards more secure when shopping online."
Actimize, a leading provider of transactional risk management software for the financial services industry and a NICE Systems (NASDAQ:NICE) company, today announced that MasterCard is using the Actimize technology to augment its ATM and Debit fraud detection capabilities for issuers.
Actimize recently enhanced its debit fraud solution by acquiring proven analytic models used today by MasterCard in its Fraud Monitor service, a real-time risk scoring and fraud prevention service for PIN-based transactions offered by MasterCard to its customers.
The technology is proven to fight ATM and debit fraud effectively across multiple card brands and geographies and used and tested by clients such as MasterCard and other card issuers.
The Actimize fraud detection analytics are unique in that their multi-dimensional profiles can be created and updated in real time to detect suspicious activities at the card, device, account level and many other dimensions.
"MasterCard, the industry's security innovator and a global debit card leader, values our new relationship with Actimize in delivering value-added real-time risk scoring and fraud prevention solutions to our customers," says Bruce Rutherford, Group Head, MasterCard. "We have already received affirmation of the value of this solution from our customers who use this technology and we are looking forward to further evolving the technology and models."
Amir Orad, EVP and CMO of Actimize, said, "Our strategy is to offer a unique combination of the best ATM and debit fraud analytical solution with a proven scalable enterprise fraud platform. The fact that our technology has been selected by MasterCard and offered to their members worldwide means a lot to us and our customers."
As a franchisor, processor and advisor, MasterCard develops and markets payment solutions, processes over 18 billion transactions each year, and provides industry-leading analysis and consulting services to financial institution customers and merchants.
NEW YORK (AP) — The reliance of restaurant chains and retail stores on outside companies to handle credit-card processing and other information-technology functions is partly to blame for a rash of consumer data breaches over the last few years, according to data sleuths at Verizon Communications Inc.
Even a chain with thousands of restaurants might have only 100 employees in information technology, so it uses outside vendors for many IT functions, said Bryan Sartin, director of the investigative response team at Verizon Business.
"What happens is there's a lack of accountability on the third party," Sartin said.
Verizon's unit investigates a quarter to a third of the big, publicly announced data breaches that occur each year, and hundreds of smaller cases.
In recent years, restaurant and retail businesses have accounted for more than half of Verizon's 230 to 250 cases per year, according to a report Verizon was set to issue Thursday. It often finds that insiders at service vendors are part of the heists.
Organized data-stealing gangs "go to the call centers, the Web development companies, the content development companies, the business partners, the people who pick up the backup tapes," Sartin said. "They say ... if you hate your boss and you're in financial straits, we're your solution. Give us access to your customers. Better yet, give us your data."
In a typical case Sartin was involved in, the team was approached by a large oil company in Canada, with thousands of gas stations. Customers were finding spurious charges on their credit cards after using them at the stations.
The team soon figured out that someone at a technology vendor was responsible, but couldn't pin it down. So the investigators set a trap in the system, to see who accessed customer data.
"The trap went off on Saturday morning," Sartin said. "Hackers always think nobody's looking on Saturday mornings."
A police car headed to the vendor's office, and the culprit turned out to be a 21-year-old who supported the software that operated the gas pumps. He had sold lists of customer data to organized crime.
Many breaches don't happen through outsourcing. In one of the largest cases in recent years, the gang that stole 41 million credit and debit card numbers from chains including TJX Cos. obtained access through unsecured wireless networks, not through subcontractors' systems.
Still, Verizon's report advises companies to keep a tighter rein on contractors, including by limiting partners' access to only the data they need.
In an article in eMarketer, they talk about the fact that the loss of sales due to "stockouts" has reached $93 Billion dollars and some retailers have responded with an e-commerce element inside their bricks and mortar locations. When you consider the cost of inventory, the cost of rent, the cost of build-outs, the cost of advertising "special occasions" or "blowout sales" then combine that with the fact that it's e-commerce driving the growth of major retailers, I would look for a different retail landscape within 10 years. Maybe this is the start...
Some retailers are providing in-store kiosks and wireless devices to let shoppers access a store's Website for product information or to place an online order, according to AMR Research.
"But the price listed on your Website was lower!"
Statements like this may not be heard in retail stores for much longer. Some stores have maintained Web-exclusive pricing or acted as if consumers never researched on the Internet before making a trip to pick up their products.
Yet nearly six out of 10 consumers in the US now use the Internet as their first choice for researching items purchased in a store, according to Nielsen Online, and smart retailers are bringing the e-commerce element to brick-and-mortar.
More than four out of 10 retailers surveyed said they offered such services, and nearly three-quarters said they planned to do so by 2010. Store kiosks can save the sale for retailers by creating "an endless aisle of products" when the store is out of stock or space limitations prevent the retailer from displaying its full selection.
The loss of sales to competitors due to stockouts measures $93 billion, according to the 2008 "Store Systems Study" produced by RIS News and research partner IHL Group. Another application of store kiosks is to provide customers with supplementary product information available from the retailer's Website.
Simply put, HomeATM Provides Online Shoppers With the Ability to Swipe and Process Their Own Credit/Debit Cards, with Their Own Point of Sale (POS) Device Within the Friendly Confines of Their Own Home. My point is this: When online shopping, the "Point" Of Sale is where the consumer is...at home. Therefore, that's where the "SwipePIN" device should be. No home should be without one if they intend to shop and buy online.
Assuming an online shopper desires (and they do) a secure transaction, then typing in their Personal Account Numbers (PAN) is not a good idea...period. Consumers wouldn't write down their account numbers when going to a bricks and mortal retail store, so why do we think it prudent to do it when visiting a virtual one online?
In recent past, we would "hand over" our credit and debit cards, but those days are over as now, those very same cards don't leave our hands. "We swipe our cards ourselves." The reasons for doing so are fraud/security related, so, if consumers want a more secure online transaction, then why wouldn't they do the same thing online? Fact is, they would.
Once a consumer is armed with a personal swiping device which never leaves the safety of their home they've protected themselves against keylogging, screen-scraping, wardriving, skimming and myriad other methods used by hackers to intercept online transactions. PIN Debit, (Swipe and Enter PIN) is the most secure way to purchase online, which is why it offers internet retailers the lowest possible Interchange Rate available. Oh, and did I mention that HomeATM offers about the easiest way in the world to securely send money to anyone anywhere in the world?
Here's an article from BusinessWeek talking about alternative payment methods, and which one might be a "PayPal Killer." The suggestions provided for alternative payments companies have all been met or exceeded by HomeATM's Swipe at Home Solution.
Despite the acceptance of credit cards and services like PayPal, the issue of getting money from one person to another online still offers opportunities for innovation.
Venture firms are continuing to fund startups that hope to offer better ways to pay online, while the growth of Software as a Service (SaaS) in the enterprise has led to a need for new tools in corporate billing management. Further out, buying items over a mobile phone presents a multibillion-dollar opportunity—if someone can make it easy.
Despite the early-mover advantage PayPal has, and the presence of rival offerings from Internet giant Google (GOOG), there are plenty of retailers who only accept credit cards for online purchases. That eliminates their ability to sell to those without credit and those concerned with security online.
There are a few ways rival online payment services can find success against PayPal, wrote Jim Friedland, an analyst at Cowan & Co. earlier this week, citing a few examples: providing a neutral independent platform (PayPal is owned by Web retailer eBay (EBAY)), extending credit to shoppers, and offering lower transaction fees.
Editor's Note: So the few ways rival payment services can find success against PayPal would be to:
Create the ability to sell to those without creditcards
Provide a more secure transaction
Offer lower transaction fees
Make it easy.
HomeATM covers all four bases at once:
Those without credit cards have an ATM card or debit card, so credit isn't necessarily needed. Swiping the card provides a highly secure transaction, (covered) and entering the PIN provides dual authentication, which is why Card Present PIN Authenticated transaction fees are significantly lower than the more risky Card Not Present (CNP) rates, (covered) and HomeATM does it with the same methodology consumers are accustomed to utilizing at a retail location...by swiping their card into a POS device. Easy as 1-2-3-4. The article continues...
And startups are still searching for other opportunities online. Just last week online bill pay startup eBillMe raised $12 million from Canaan Partners and New Celtic Ventures. The company offers vendors an alternative to credit cards by allowing shoppers to receive a bill at their online banking portal. This allows shoppers to avoid putting their personal information on the merchant's site and allows for a cash, rather than credit, transaction.
Mobile Payments to Climb
But online sales are no longer limited to the PC. U.S. consumers are starting to use their mobile phones to make purchases, and this could be a growing market in the years to come. But there are challenges ahead. Bigger players such as PayPal and credit-card companies already offer mobile-payment products, and the current U.S. market for mobile-pay services is still small.
Only 1.5 percent of U.S. consumers have ever used their mobile phones to make a payment, but almost 50 percent are aware that they can do so, according to a survey released this week. The research, commissioned by financial firm Mercatus, predicts that with better services and customer education the percentage of people who will make payments from their mobile phones is likely to grow in five years to 15 percent among those age 18 to 30.The growing use of smartphones and shopping sites optimized for mobiles require payment options that are easier than keying in a 16-digit credit-card number. Startups such as angel-backed Billing Revolution and Zong, which launched earlier this month after raising more than $12 million in venture capital, are tackling the problem of buying on your mobile phone. Zong sends purchase information to carriers, which then bill subscribers for their purchases, while Billing Revolution offers a mobile credit-card processing platform. In April, Obopay scored $20 million for its money-transfer-via-mobile efforts.
Enterprise Customers Are an Opportunity
While the opportunity in mobile is still just cresting the horizon, enterprise customers provide an immediate opportunity for startups seeking to streamline transactions. In March, two startups offering an online billing platform for companies delivering SaaS products raised money. Zuora brought in $6.5 million in first-round funding led by Benchmark Capital for its platform. Rival Vindicia announced a $5.6 million round led by DCM and Leader Ventures.
These companies aim to make it easier for SaaS vendors to track and bill all of their customers. They also help customers track and manage multiple software services they might be buying—a task akin to managing household bills from tens or even hundreds of service providers. Tim McAdam, a general partner with Trinity Ventures, says these sorts of billing platforms and ways to track payments still represent a big category and no one has mastered it yet.
With everyone searching for ways to make money online that don't revolve around advertising, offering seamless but secure online payments will go a long way in enabling alternative business models.
Cisco's Internet Business Solutions Group has announced results of a survey finding that "important consumer segments such as baby boomers trust online payment providers more than they trust traditional banks."
"Consumers are demanding the same convenience they receive online when shopping in a brick-and-mortar environment. This dramatic shift in consumer expectations presents a considerable market opportunity for financial institutions that embrace connected commerce. The average incremental value of connected commerce for the top 20 U.S. banks is estimated to reach more than $100 million yearly by 2015.
In an effort to help clients stay competitive and increase their profitability, Cisco IBSG, the company's global strategic consulting arm, surveyed more than 1,500 consumers to better understand how their behaviors and perceptions shape the evolving commerce landscape of shopping and payments. By monitoring what innovative companies are doing to attract and retain customers in retail and related industries, Cisco IBSG helps financial institutions take advantage of leading, innovative practices to remain relevant.
The research reveals that evolving customer preferences among all age groups represent both a challenge and an opportunity for financial institutions. As consumers increasingly use the Internet and mobile devices to make purchases and payments, banks are subject to both customer attrition and revenue loss. The research also shows, however, that banks can reverse this trend and use their connections to merchant and consumer payment data to create new revenue models from advertising, cross-selling and value-added services surrounding points of sale"
"Retail financial institutions are uniquely poised to enable the next evolution of connected commerce," said Jim Greene, vice president and global head of financial services, Cisco IBSG. "The profound shift in consumer shopping preferences, coupled with the pervasiveness of the network, presents a tremendous opportunity for financial institutions to evolve from simply being a provider of the payment element of a purchase, to being a uniting factor among consumers, merchants, advertisers, product manufacturers and payment providers."
Consumers Prefer the Online Channel
Historically, the online shopping experience was designed to imitate the brick-and-mortar experience. The Cisco IBSG survey results show that now, coming full circle, the brick-and-mortar experience must resemble the online channel to meet the shifting expectations of consumers.
The survey suggests that the physical-store experience is increasingly falling short of consumer expectations:
50 percent say the checkout process takes too long
48 percent say items aren't in stock
46 percent say they can't find the items they want
22 percent say they don't always have applicable coupons or offers with them
20 percent say it is hard or time-consuming to keep track of receipts
As consumers' expectations rise, merchants, advertising agencies and new financial services entrants are all trying to capture consumer attention at the point of purchase and, in some cases, to disintermediate traditional payment players. The threat to existing banks is evident: 87 percent of those who use the services of alternate payment providers (such as PayPal and Obopay) indicated a strong interest in using mobile Short Message Service (SMS) or a similar method to initiate payments in physical stores. The PELORUS Group estimates that by 2010, payments made via emerging methods such as radio frequency identification (RFID), SMS, and biometrics are expected to grow to $400 billion. In addition, 23 percent of all survey respondents expressed interest in using a mobile device to make contactless payments in physical stores, and that number is only expected to grow. Two-thirds of current mobile banking users expressed interest in "swiping" a device embedded with a chip at the point of sale.
"Consumers not only recognize the conveniences enabled by the Internet but now also require the totality of their shopping experiences to afford those same benefits," said Greene. "Given their current interaction with both consumers and merchants, banks are in a unique position to provide these 'connected' propositions and the insight that leads us into 21st-century commerce."
How Financial Institutions Can Compete
Through the study and its proven success working with 80 of the 100 largest global financial services organizations, Cisco IBSG identified the consumer segments with the highest likelihood of engaging with banks for connected commerce services. The survey also identified the most important ways in which financial institutions need to change their interactions with consumers in order to remain relevant in today's market. To increase their competitiveness, banks must:
Provide superior commercial services with greater transparency, security, speed and flexibility
Use their relationships with, and access to, both merchants and consumers to provide new revenue sources to the merchants and value-added services to consumers
Help consumers make sense of their spending patterns and provide guidance and recommendations
In collaboration with the merchant, provide advertisers and product manufacturers with access to consumers at or near the point of sale so that the advertisers and manufacturers can offer real-time, targeted promotions gleaned from the customers' profiles, transactions and behavior analytics
Manage loyalty programs to lower the cost of running these programs for merchants and to improve the ease of use and benefit accumulation for consumers
Build a subscriber-referral model for merchants to bid for customer attention
Provide customized payment terms or offer "matching" terms at the point of purchase
"In this changing landscape, banks must continually evaluate their long-term competitive position to take advantage of new opportunities and mitigate threats presented by the connected consumer at point of sale," said George Tubin, senior research director, Tower Group.
PCI SSC meeting attendees help guide payments' future
The PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC), a global, open industry standards body providing management of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), PIN Entry Device (PED) Security Requirements and the Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS), today announced that more than 550 attendees from over 325 organizations met at the Council’s second annual Community Meeting, in Orlando, Florida, to provide input and analysis of the newly released 1.2 version of the PCI DSS and other payment card security standards. This represents a 71 percent increase in attendance from 2007. The highly anticipated event, held from Sept. 23-25, welcomed the Council’s participating organizations and assessment community contributors.
The Council also is pleased to announce that in addition to its rapidly growing assessment community members, there are more than 500 participating organizations from around the world that actively contribute to the standards setting process, up from approximately 240 in 2007. Participating organizations provide the backbone of feedback and support for the PCI security standards and cross a wide spectrum of industries and locations. Participating organizations are the only group in the Council that receive early versions of draft standards and documentation, provide feedback and direction on the PCI standards, and receive regular communications and opportunities to work with the Council on cardholder data security. The list of current participating organizations can be found at https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/participation/member_list.html .
Topics discussed at the Orlando meeting included the release of the PCI DSS version 1.2, updates to the PA-DSS and PED Security Requirements, special interest group reports on wireless and payment card pre-authorization security, the introduction of a quality assurance program for the QSA community along with keynote addresses from the Department of Justice and Forrester Research. These interactive sessions gave participants key information as they continue with their PCI standards implementation.
Because of the dramatic increase in participation in the Council, this year’s community meeting in Orlando will be followed up with a second community meeting in Brussels, Belgium, October 21-23, 2008. This second meeting will enable participating organizations and the PCI assessment community to engage with the Council at an additional venue. More than 120 delegates have already registered for this additional meeting.
In addition to the more than 500 participating organizations, the Council has 147 approved scanning vendor (ASV) companies and 164 qualified security assessor (QSA) companies that help ensure continued compliance with the PCI DSS. The Council also approves payment application QSAs (PA QSAs) as part of the PA-DSS program. Together, the assessment community and participating organizations, at the community meeting and throughout the year help define and evolve the security standards to protect payment cardholder account data.
“As we meet at our community meetings it is especially important that the Council reflects the broadest spectrum of payments system players,” said Bob Russo, general manager, PCI Security Standards Council. “The tremendous and rapid growth of our participating organization program and assessment ecosystem, as well as the increased attendance at our community meetings, is a testament to the payment industry’s commitment to protecting cardholder data while ensuring that the standards we manage truly reflect global industry desires and needs.”
For More Information:
More information on the PCI Security Standards Council and becoming a participating organization please visit www.pcisecuritystandards.org , or contact the PCI Security Standards Council at www.participation@pcisecuritystandards.org .
About the PCI Security Standards Council
The mission of the PCI Security Standards Council is to enhance payment account security by driving education and awareness of the PCI Data Security Standard and other standards that increase payment data security. The PCI Security Standards Council was formed by the major payment card brands American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB International, MasterCard Worldwide and Visa Inc. to provide a transparent forum in which all stakeholders can provide input into the ongoing development, enhancement and dissemination of the PCI Data Security Standard (DSS), PIN Entry Device (PED) Security Requirements and the Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS). Merchants, banks, processors and other vendors are encouraged to join as Participating Organizations.
The U.S. Census Bureau reports that U.S. retail eCommerce sales for the second quarter of 2008 totaled $34.6 billion (U.S.), an increase of more than 9% over the same period in 2007, while total retail sales increased by only 2.5%. Statistics Canada reports that, “Online sales increased at a double-digit pace for the sixth consecutive year in 2007. Total private and public sector Internet sales hit an estimated $62.7 billion, up 26% from 2006.”
While these figures still represent a relatively small percentage of the retail market, the numbers are staggering. eCommerce is big business.
But there's a problem inherent within the system.
Credit and debit cards, the primary payment system for online transactions, are really designed to be used face-to-face. In electronic purchasing there are too few ways for the merchant to be certain the credit card is being used by its owner, and no way for the purchaser to be sure their private information will not be disclosed by the merchant to a third party.
One obvious solution would be personal devices, such as the ones provided by HomeATM.
Consumers would swipe their own card - in their own home...and verify the transaction with a PIN. This solution provides double authentication to the merchant, and to V/MC, making it a more secure transaction.
Two more important things happen with a personal swiper.
The fact that the consumer "swiped" their own card transformed what would've been a "Card Not Present" or CNP transaction, into a "Card Present" or CP transaction. CP Transactions have a signficantly lower Interchange rate.
Secondly, after they entered their PIN, what would have been a CP transaction further evolves into a CP with PIN authentication transaction, further reducing the Interchange fees, because it further secures the transaction.
Obviously, by not having to type your personal account number into a box provided by the merchant, you eliminate the potential for screen scraping, keylogging, or other methods used by hackers.
Another big benefit that lies within this scenario is that because consumers are inserting their own personal cards into their own personal device vs. a computer or merchant key pad – the vendor would never have access to the customer’s PIN. This would further protect the customer in the event a merchant's e-commerce website data is breached.
Obviously, there would be no effect and it wouldn't affect consumer's who utilized HomeATM's personal swiping device...because their data wouldn't be there to be hacked in the first place.
Thus, when consumers are left to their own devices, it's a win-win situation for all involved.
It was clearly the web and e-commerce that drove sales growth at The Neiman Marcus Group Inc. for the 2008 fiscal year.
For the year, Neiman Marcus, grew web sales by 13.1% to $564.5 million from e-commerce sales of $499 million in fiscal 2007. In comparison, total revenue increased by 4.8% from $4.39 billion in fiscal 2007 to $4.6 billion in FY 2008. Store sales rose year-over-year by 4.9% to $3.85 billion from $3.67 billion. Neiman Marcus posted operating earnings of $466.4 million from operating earnings of $476.8 million in fiscal 2007.
Overall the web accounted for 12% of total revenue, but generated 62% of growth across all channels, including stores, catalog and the Internet.
Last week (Use a PIN to "Stop Sticking It to Us") I blogged about the Retail Council of Canada's new campaign against high interchange fees. In it, I mentioned that if all these organizations made the same effort to have their customers use PIN Debit, they would stop sticking it to themselves.
Apparently, the Retailer Council of Canada sure has the backing of Canada's major Retail Association's behind them.
I could see the very same transpiring on the Internet Retailing front. 100% of the Top 500 Internet Retailers would: increase the security of their transactions and save millions annually on the significantly reduced Interchange Fees, reduced because of the security of a PIN-based transaction.
Maybe call it "Start Sticking It To Us - With a PIN"
Credit card companies pulling in record profits while retailers suffer- Mark Anderson, Canwest News Service
A shop-owner forwarded an e-mail from the Retail Council of Canada the other day. It appears the council, which represents some 40,000 storefronts across Canada, is attempting to organize opposition to ongoing increases in credit-card fees, the "interchange fees" card companies charge retailers for the right to conduct business though Visa, MasterCard, American Express or any other credit cards.
As it stands, Canadian retailers fork over about two per cent of the cost of any credit card transactions to card companies: if a customer purchases a lamp from a furniture store for $100, $2 goes to the card company; if the customer purchases a bedroom set for $10,000, $200 goes to the credit card company, and so on.
The retail council says interchange fees already amount to $4.5 billion annually and have been escalating of late with the introduction of "premium" cards that provide lavish awards points to card users, the catch being that the cards come with higher interchange fees, which means retailers and ultimately consumers end up paying for those incentive programs.
On top of that, the card companies charge retailers fees to rent the credit card processing equipment and software necessary to conduct card-based transactions, as well as a variety of additional fees, to the degree that one retailer told me he ends up shipping about one per cent of his annual $6-million in revenue directly to Visa, MasterCard and the like.
Fine, you might say, the cost of doing business. Except the retail council argues that Canadian interchange fees are already among the highest in the industrialized world; Canada is one of the only jurisdictions that doesn't regulate interchange fees; the fees should be charged on a flat fee basis not as a percentage of the total sale cost; and the fees are being increased in an arbitrary and non-transparent way. (My retail contact, who doesn't want to be named for fear of reprisals from card companies, says extra charges related to the issuance of premium cards came "out of the blue" and raised his average Visa interchange fees from about 1.7 per cent to 2.3 per cent).
The most important point is that as their margins get squeezed by interchange fees, retailers have no choice but to pass the costs on to consumers in the form of higher prices for goods and services, leaving less money in the hands of everyone except the card companies.
Profit at Visa Inc., for example, rose 28 per cent to $314 million US in its most recent quarter. Few retailers can boast that kind of quarterly performance in an economic down-cycle.
Rubbing salt in the wound is the fact that Visa has set aside $3 billion from the record $18 billion US it raised when it went public in March in order to settle potential lawsuits stemming from allegations the company conspired to stifle competition and fix prices.
They call themselves, not unreasonably, the StopStickingItToUs Coalition, and they've vowed to make escalating interchange fees an election issue by encouraging consumers to sign petitions and retailers to contact their members of Parliament and demand that party leaders and candidates take a stand on the issue.
What if, I asked my retail contact, you all just stopped accepting credit cards? "We couldn't do that," he said. "Interchange fees are still better than bounced cheques."
What if you stopped accepting credit cards for a day? All 120,000 of you. And advertised widely in advance, apologizing to customers for the inconvenience and explaining the boycott's being done for their benefit and the benefit of the Canadian economy at large?
"That," he said after a moment, "could be very interesting indeed."
Editor's Note: Both this and the previous post talk about RevolutionMoney and PayPal's P2P Money Transfer platforms. I know I haven't talked a lot about it on the blog, as we're working hard to bring the more secure and thus lower interchange fees of PIN Debit and Credit to the web, but...
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Heart Health Inc. (OTCPK: HHEL) is pleased to announce that the Company has appointed Kenneth G. Mages, the founder and CEO of HomeATM Payments and a contributing developer of the Heart Health Monitor (HHM), to its advisory board.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uPHfG14CVgGCwyNSMERv-H5rhnv5aeNiw1bfNdkMj-sUyxfnQSUE5snR53HwV2G7hmLqp0eVDbYX3AVi6vHWbr0HPexnnQ8ezmh1RLOu9Bj_3kyknFk73kzsF7DlganRcVFAR-EZ4aHkb7RPIoy6A=s0-d)
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Apparently, the Retailer Council of Canada sure has the backing of Canada's major Retail Association's behind them.
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