Thank you again to the Ensemble IQ and HTNG teams for putting on a great show. The combination of these two organizations has produced a terrific conference. The intimacy of the old HTF show is still intact but the addition of the HTNG workgroup members has added a deeper dive into various technology areas.
March 11, 2018 marks the 25th anniversary for Merchant Link. Merchant Link has grown from a small Technical Support Center in Bethesda, Maryland, to an international provider of payment security solutions. The landscape is much different today than it was in 1993 when Merchant Link got its start.
We are just back from NRF. What a show this year: 35,000 participants coming from all over the world to discover the latest technologies and to learn how to best manage the digital transformation retailers are going through. From the “new shiny” (IoT, AI, virtual reality, wearable) to the more traditional (omni-channel, mobility, mPOS, customer experience), here’s what we learned.
Unless you have been living under a rock for the past few months, it has been difficult not to be bombarded with news regarding crypto currencies like BitCoin, Ethereum and even LiteCoin. Depending on whom you talk or listen to for business news this could be the ultimate in Ponzi schemes or it may be the beginning of a new payment medium that could, over time, compete with the major card associations for customer and merchant acceptance.
Most businesses that accept credit cards for payment are doing their best to avoid touching and storing cardholder data. One of the best ways to protect cardholder data at rest is to use a tokenization service to convert cardholder data to tokens, which cannot be used to commit fraud if they happen to be stolen or intercepted by hackers. But not all token service providers are the same.
At Merchant Link, we work with customers every day that are trying to get their POS or PMS systems EMV ready. The solution the merchant wants involves taking a chip transaction, moving the liability of the transaction back on to the card brands, and helping the merchant securely answer the PCI SAQ audit that the merchant may go through from time to time.
Researching and evaluating EMV solutions is currently on many hospitality and retail organizations to do list. In most cases, those organizations spend appropriate time reviewing and evaluating gateway providers, processor options, PED (Pin Entry Device) manufacturers, as well as any costs associated with the solution. While all those things are clearly important, there are a few other considerations your organization should be sure to evaluate.
As reported by PYMNTS.com https://www.pymnts.com/mastercard/2017/mastercard-ditches-cardholder-signatures-for-transactions this morning, MasterCard announced that, effective April 2018, they will no longer require signatures for payment processing.
Happy National Cyber Security Awareness Month!
As you are looking to secure your payments with tokenization and encryption, don’t forget about the little best practices that help to keep your data safe. One of the most overlooked practices is a strong password.
In the late 1990’s, the push for credit card transactions was to upgrade from “dial up” to Internet. It required an upgrade to systems, which many merchants felt was just onerous. Once adopted, however, it became clear that this technology was far superior to the old technology, and the public quickly expected merchants to offer the faster transaction speed.
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