As methods of payment continue to evolve, they have become varied across demographics. While few consumers carry significant amounts of cash, and even fewer write checks, more and more are using a growing number of non-cash alternatives to pay for products and services. Credit and debit cards are generally the...
Subscription-Based Revenue: It’s Time to Reevaluate Your Business Model
Subscription-based revenue models offer clear advantages to businesses, and many merchants may be overlooking opportunities for their business to grow in this space. Companies like Netflix and Hulu naturally lean toward a subscription revenue model, but less obvious products have found their way into the subscription space as well. The...
Forecasting the Future of Digital Wallets
The question of digital wallet acceptance is a tired one – but for many merchants a decision they might want to reconsider. Stored credentials, defined as a system or service that stores multiple payment methods for use across multiple websites, is not a new concept. In fact, many would say...
The Cashless Trend
Several organizations are making changes to go cashless or at least pilot the concept, including Massachusetts’ MBTA, American and United terminals in select airports (Miami being the latest) and Shake Shack’s recently opened cashless location in New York, to name a few. Living in the Seattle area, I have access...
Changing Signature Requirements – How Will You Be Impacted?
Starting last year, the 4 major US card brands – MasterCard, Visa, Amex, and Discover – issued announcements that beginning in April 2018, merchants are no longer be required to collect signatures on card present transactions. Each card brand's program has different rules and requirements about which transactions are exempt...
The Voice Assistant: A New Mobile Frontier for Merchants, Part I of II
Voice activated personal assistants like Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri have exploded onto the scene. It’s expected that by 2022, 50% of US households will have at least one smart speaker with personal voice assistant capability.[1] While the number of devices in use is huge, the functionality they currently offer...
To PIN or Not to PIN?
A PIN— a Personal Identification Number. A customer’s PIN is the number that can verify a customer’s identity during a transaction. Most consumers and merchants believe that a PIN should be the de facto method for validating a cardholder’s identity. The question of whether or not a PIN will be...
Know Your Decision Makers and Build Your Community of Support
Having trouble getting a project or initiative in motion? Are people your biggest challenge? Regardless of your level or position within a company, you need to gain support for your effort and get the commitment to the next steps. Knowing how people respond to change and how they make decisions...
Whitepaper: Managing Risk in Faster Payments Systems
Under direction from the Faster Payments Task Force (FPTF), the United States seeks to modernize its payments infrastructure and develop a new system which can provide safe, ubiquitous, and faster payment capabilities to all stakeholders in the payments value chain. The opportunities created by the instantaneous movement of money around...
Approaching Consumer-Facing Programs: Asking the Right Questions to Deliver Maximum Impact
Earlier this year on CAPRAplus we discussed ensuring that the wants and needs of the consumer are put first when developing any consumer engagement program by asking the question, “Do my consumers really want this?” This time around we will look inward to the merchant to ensure consumer engagement programs...
The Dust Has Settled On Equifax. What Now?
On September 7, Equifax, one of the “big three” U.S. credit bureaus, announced a massive data breach impacting an estimated 143 million Americans. Now that preliminary information related to the breach has been released, this CapraPLUS post reflects on what happened, the impacts of the event (both immediate and long-term),...
Fraud Programs – Doing More Harm Than Good?
U.S. merchants had an astounding $9 Billion in payment card fraud in 2015, a number that continues to grow at an increasing rate year after year.[1] In a retail climate that that faces increasingly tighter margins, higher operating costs, and intense competition from low cost, online only retailers, fraud losses...
