Payments On Fire

Ecommerce Payments

Episode 114 – How to Orchestrate the Merchant’s Payments Infrastructure – Justin Benson, Spreedly

By George Peabody on March 6 2020

On Payments on Fire® we’ve talked with gateway operators, processors, tokenization specialists, fraud management firms, and others – all providers who help payment acceptors handle their payments. The range of services and business value they deliver varies a lot. Some providers do everything. Others, like Spreedly, the subject of this Payments on Fire® podcast, focus […]

Authentication

Episode 55 – 3D Secure and the IoT – CardinalCommerce

By George Peabody on July 24 2017

The Internet of Things may be a hot topic but its security isn’t hot at all. Up until recently, IoT device manufacturers and buyers haven’t cared much about security, a disinterest that’s led to over one hundred thousand surveillance cameras being hijacked by Mirai botnet malware. While cameras aren’t making or accepting payments (yet) it’s […]

Big Data

Episode 51 – Unravelling the Payments Data Hairball

By George Peabody on May 16 2017

Payments transactions generate plenty of useful data for merchants. But wrangling that data into informative shape gets challenging, especially when multiple acquirers, gateways, processors, or other service providers are used. Each one has a different approach to reporting and some are (much) better than others. Developing a consolidated view and, as important, reconciling financials from […]

Card Fraud

Episode 45 – False Declines and Ethoca’s Role

By George Peabody on December 20 2016

In e-commerce and mobile commerce the problem of false declines is significant, especially during the holidays. Issuers decline transactions that online merchants approve. And vice versa. In other words, the necessary process of sorting out fraud from good transactions catches good transactions with the bad. This poor decision making means merchants lose the sale and […]

Authentication

Biometrics, Big Data, and Tossing the Password

By George Peabody on June 30 2016

Digital identity is the black hole of the internet. Our online lives simply aren’t protected by a system without strong authentication. Killing the password is Mission One for security professionals because they’re so readily stolen through phishing attacks and malware. Users, warned to make passwords complex and unique, have no hope of remembering them. And a […]

ECommerce

Networks Put Their Money on Checkout for Mobile

By George Peabody on January 18 2016

Anyone even vaguely conscious during Sunday afternoon football games has seen adverts for Visa Checkout, that shopping cart checkout assistant the card network is encouraging everyone—cardholders, issuers, and merchants—to adopt. Visa is not alone. MasterCard’s MasterPass and American Express Checkout are similar product offerings all meant to add convenience and security to the merchant’s checkout […]

Authentication

PoF 26 – Maybe It’s 3D Secure, After All

By George Peabody on August 20 2015

The 3D Secure protocols, one for each network, that connect ecommerce merchants to the cardholder’s issuer, has had a rough go. But after ten years, smarter application of the tool and, in particular, risk-based usage makes it more attractive to both issuers and merchants. In this conversation with Mike Roche, VP of Consumer Authentication at […]

Big Data

PoF 22 – Ethoca and the Power of Data Collaboration

By George Peabody on July 21 2015

The domain of point of sale (POS) has three legs to its security stool: EMV, point to point encryption, and card number tokenization. Card not present (CNP) merchants and issuers have the more challenging task of assembling fraud mitigation tools on their own. The networks have had, until EMVCo’s move into payment card tokenization, not […]