Archive for July, 2007

Payment Card Use In Canada

In September, Interac, Mastercard and Visa Canada are planning a trial of chip cards (I understand using the EMV standard) in the Kitchener-Waterloo area just outside of Toronto according to ComputerWorld. Merchants in the region will be set up with EMV enabled POS devices that will accept chip based credit and debit cards.
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Management Changes at Orbograph

Orbograph, a developer of recognition solutions for the U.S. cheque processing industry and provider of solutions for business process outsourcing has announced some management changes. Orbograph’s technologies including image recognition, fraud detection, business process outsourcing and image quality assurance are used at many financial institutions across North America, processing millions of items each day.
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Frying Your Chicken & Egg

No one is going to use your new payments platform until a significant number of businesses or people accept the new method, yet no one is going to invest in the infrastructure to accept and handle the new payment method until lots of customers are using the new method. This chicken & egg problem needs to be addressed in any strategy, and the answer is often having a backward compatibility option that dissolves the problem.
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Banks

It just occurred to me yesterday that I have never once had any communication from the CEO or president of the bank at which I do most of my banking. I’m not talking about a personal, two way communication here (I certainly don’t really expect, nor necessarily want to have a phone or email conversation with someone I don’t really know), but not once has the chief of strategy and business at my bank sent me even a form letter to let me know how things are going and what’s up.
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Payments Opportunities in Second Life

Currently residents of Second Life, a virtual world created by Linden Labs buy from and sell to one another directly using the Linden (a virtual currency which is exchangeable for US dollars and other currencies on market-based currency exchanges). How about offering other payment channels in Second Life like credit cards?
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