April, 2012:

Yesterday, AIB Merchant Services announced that they will be launching their 1st contactless payment terminal.  This will be part of the next generation of tap and go payment checkout systems, competing with merchant equipment the likes of the Vivopay 4000.  Many industry pundits are predicting that in the future chips will be placed within people’s smart phones making the phone a tap and go payment device, a mobile wallet, a phone, and small PPC all wrapped up into one. AIB is just one of the companies tapping into the growing merchant services processing tap and go trend.

Following in the footsteps of the daily deals site Groupon, Mastercard has announced that they are launcing their own daily deals offering.  Yet, only their merchants who are offering merchant service through MasterCard will be allowed to advertise within their new daily deals offering.

This is smart.  Not only can they make income by offering geo-targeted daily deal offerings yet they can make more income by pushing for wider acceptance of MasterCard.

On April 10, 2012, Encore Payment Systems released a news release stating that they now have credit card security for small business.  When reading this at first I was wondering why that had not offered this sooner.  This is merchant services processing 101.

Yet, upon reading further in the press release I began to understand where they were really coming from.  What they are actually offering is the ability to audit your company’s credit card processing setup to make sure that you are PCI complaint.  This is a good and worthy service.

Choice Merchant Services offers this as part of all North AmericanBanard merchant service deals for free.  Yet Encore Payment Systems takes it a step further by offering a $10,000 fine reinbursement guarantee:

The press release states:

Unfortunately, small business owners don’t always receive the vital facts when it comes to Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance. PCI DSS is an organization established to ensure that all companies that process, store or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment. PCI Compliance is a multifaceted issue affecting great amounts of people in large and small businesses alike which is why Encore Payment Systems is now offering their merchants to become PCI DSS compliant.

Encore’s compliance team helps merchants to become compliant, scans computers for any data vulnerabilities and will cover small businesses who have completed the compliance process with up to $10,000 in fine reimbursements from a security breach event.

As you may be aware, Global Payments has acknowledged that they have incurred an unauthorized access into their system.

North American Bancard wants you to know Global Payments confirmed with us that no merchant or ISO data were compromised as a result of the breach. Global Payments believes that less than 1,500,000 card numbers may have been affected.  Their investigation to date has revealed only Track 2 card data may have been stolen, but cardholder names, addresses and social security numbers were not obtained by the criminals. The company believes that this incident is contained.

“It is reassuring that our security processes detected an intrusion.  It is crucial to understand that this incident does not involve our merchants or their relationships with their customers,” said Chairman and CEO Paul R. Garcia of Global Payments Inc.