MasterCard Send debuts as faster alternative to ACH payments

Through a single connection to the MasterCard Send platform, businesses, merchants, governments, non-profits, issuers and other senders can send money to consumers whether they are banked or unbanked, and located domestically or abroad. By digitizing personal payments that are typically handled via cash or check, MasterCard is providing greater convenience, choice and security to both payment senders and receivers in developed and developing markets.

From Mobile Payments Today –

“Earlier this year, the Federal Reserve issued a plan for collaborating with payment industry stakeholders to find a way to enhance the speed, safety and efficiency of what has become an outdated and inefficient system.

One of the Fed's desired outcomes is to improve the speed by which payments clear, particularly those that involve the ACH Network. Though the industry is still a few years from solving that problem, MasterCard Tuesday introduced a system that enables various payment industry stakeholders, including merchants, to sidestep ACH and use the established debit card networks to send funds to consumers in about the time it takes to complete an ATM transaction.

MasterCard Send is being touted as a first-of-its-kind service to enable businesses, merchants, governments, nonprofits and issuers to transfer funds to consumers' checking accounts via any U.S. debit card, including non-MasterCard debit cards.

Send is now live in the U.S., but MasterCard plans to expand it overseas to enable the aforementioned entities to transfer funds into mobile money accounts and cash agent outlets in addition to debit cards.’

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The opportunity in mobile payments

From Finextra

“Jason Lane, group executive, European market development, MasterCard, speaks about key developments in payments technology, opportunity of the internet and what's next for the payments industry”.

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The unfortunate state of mobile payments

From The Stanford Daily

“The history of mobile payments is, upon initial examination, a puzzling one. There are very few ideas in the tech industry that are as clear in their potential utility as user-friendly contactless payment. Enabling technology like near-field communication (NFC) chips has been available for years in both smartphones and retail registers. Mobile payments promised not only to deliver a better user experience, but also to lower the transaction cost for merchants, provide a timely opportunity to ditch the fraud-prone credit card system that has been with us since the 1960s and rethink payment security from first principles.

So why is the history of mobile payments littered with the corpses of ambitious challengers? In the 16 years since the founding of PayPal, why can we still not pay at the Safeway checkout counter with our PayPal accounts? Google Wallet launched over three years ago and to date has failed to achieve any meaningful market penetration. Infamous Stanford startup Clinkle set out to create a revolutionary mobile payment system and ended up shipping a glorified rewards credit card. Meanwhile, Square’s IPO dreams were crushed by the reality that it remains unprofitable.”

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MasterCard strengthens US cardholder security

From Payments Eye

“MasterCard has announced enhancements to its security efforts, providing US cardholders with greater protection from fraud and identity theft.

“Fraud prevention and detection is a 24/7 job at MasterCard. The changes that we’re making in cardholder protection combined with our efforts to move the U.S. payments industry to EMV chip technology will help deliver safer shopping experiences to consumers,” said Chris McWilton, president, North American Markets for MasterCard.

All MasterCard credit, debit, prepaid and small business cards issued in the US will now carry Identity Theft Resolution assistance. The program provides help in canceling missing cards and alerting credit reporting agencies, as well as targeting searches to detect if stolen personal and confidential data appears online.”

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U.S. ATM Fraud Losses Jump

From Bank Info Security 

“Fraud Migrating to Non-EMV Markets

ATM-related fraud losses are increasing in the U.S., and experts say that trend will continue until all U.S. debit cards make the conversion from magnetic-stripe to EMV chip and PIN.

ATM-related fraud losses are migrating away from regions where the Europay, MasterCard, Visa standard has been adopted and are shifting to markets, such as the U.S., where magnetic-stripe transactions remain the standard, according to the European ATM Security Team's biannual fraud update, which was issued July 25.”

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How to Play the Mobile Banking Revolution