June 2013

ALSO INSIDE:How Companies Are Using Big Data Now

Daily Deals’ Influence on the Future of Mobile

TransacTiontrends

The Official Publication of the Electronic Transactions Association | June 2013

Behind the scenes of the U.S. EMV migration

SecurityMove

on the

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TransacTion trends | June 2013 3

TransacTion The Official Publication of the Electronic Transactions Association Vol. 18 | No. 5

trendscover story10 Security on the MoveBy Julie Ritzer RossConversion to the EMV standard in the United States has officially begun. While the major card companies are issuing EMV cards, some merchants are holding off on accepting them, citing high costs and security concerns associated with EMV adoption.

15 Big Data Gets RealBy Rona DistenfeldThree companies share their strategies for leveraging Big Data to curb fraud, improve customer satisfaction, innovate products, and allocate resources.

FeAtUres

4 ETA GatewayInsights from ETA’s CEO, Jason Oxman

6 Industry NewsTrends, strategies, and news in the payments business and ETA member community

19 SpEcIAl SERIES

Startup Stories: Schooled on paymentsBy John ManassoTuition Management Systems offers education-focused services.

10

depArtments21 Ad Index

22 Future of the BusinessDaily deal sites have brought marketing and payments together. What comes next?

24 Industry InsiderPlanet Group’s software suite assists customers in becoming their own processors.

22

15

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4 June 2013 | TransacTion trends

Electronic Transactions Association1101 16th Street NW, Suite 402Washington, DC 20036202/828.2635www.electran.org

ETA CEO Jason OxmanCOO Pamela FurneauxDirector, Education and Professional Development Rori FerensicDirector, Government and Industry Relations Mary Weaver BennettDirector, Membership and Marketing Del Baker RobertsonDirector, Communications Meghan Cieslak

Publishing offices Stratton Publishing & Marketing Inc.5285 Shawnee Road, Suite 510Alexandria, VA 22312703/914.9200; fax 703/914.6777

Subscriptions: 202/677.7411

Publisher Debra StrattonAssociate Publisher & Editor Josephine Rossi

Contributing Editor Angela Hickman Brady

Editorial/Production Associate Christine Umbrell

Art Director Janelle Welch

Contributing WritersGreg Cohen, Lia Dangelico, Rona Distenfeld, John Manasso, Bryan Ochalla, and Julie Ritzer Ross

Advertising SalesSteve Schwanz or Fox Associates (800/440.0232; [email protected])

Fox Associates Offices Chicago 312/644.3888

New York 212/725.2106

Detroit 248/626.0511

Phoenix 480/538.5021

Los Angeles 805/522.0501

Atlanta 800/440.0231

Editorial Policy: The Electronic Transactions Association, founded in 1990, is a not-for-profit organization representing entities who provide transaction services between

merchants and settlement banks and others involved in the electronic transactions industry. Our purpose is to provide leadership in the industry through education, advocacy, and the exchange of information.

The magazine acts as a moderator without approving, disapproving, or guaranteeing the validity or accuracy of any data, claim, or opinion appearing under a byline or obtained or quoted from an acknowledged source. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the official view of the Electronic Transactions Association. Also, appearance of advertisements and new product or service information does not constitute an endorsement of products or services featured by the Association. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is provided and disseminated with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or other professional services. If legal advice and other expert assistance are required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Transaction Trends (ISSN 1939-1595) is the official publication, published 10 times annually, of the Electronic Transactions Association, 1101 16th St. N.W., Suite 402, Washington, DC 20036; 800/695-5509 or 202/828-2635; 202/828-2639 fax.

Copyright © 2013 The Electronic Transactions Association. All Rights Reserved, including World Rights and Electronic Rights. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission from the publisher, nor may any part of this publication be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or copied by mechanical photocopying, recording, or other means, now or hereafter invented, without permission of the publisher.

ETA Gateway

G reetings from ETA. For those who were part of the excitement in New Orleans, let me say thank

you for being a part of our largest event in ETA history. With more than 3,000 attendees and 200 exhibiting com-panies, the 2013 Annual Meeting and

Expo broke all records. Thousands of payments and technology indus-try executives, venture capitalists, and media from 10 countries were there to experience the next generation of in-novation in payments. More payments indus-try business gets done at the ETA show than

any other event all year.New Orleans was just the begin-

ning of what promises to be a ground-breaking year for ETA. We are heading to Europe with the launch of the Inter-national Acquiring Forum (IAF), a new educational and networking event that

will take place in London from Sept. 17-19, 2013, at the Millennium Gloucester Hotel and Conference Center. The IAF will bring together experts and indus-try leaders from around the world to tackle issues of importance to acquirers, banks, ISOs, processors, and suppliers.

The following month, our Strategic Leadership Forum (SLF) will take place October 15-17 at the Montelucia Re-sort and Spa in Scottsdale, Arizona. Join us and capitalize on the knowledge of hundreds of frontline leaders, business visionaries, and senior-level profession-als who are advancing the payments industry. Top executives at the nexus of technology, mobile, and e-commerce will share smart techniques and explore the next generation of innovative ideas.

And of course, our 2014 Annual Meeting and Expo is only 10 months away! Next year, we are back at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, April 8–10, 2014. With the expo f loor already 80 percent sold, we expect to have another record-breaking year. The 2014 ETA An-

nual Meeting & Expo is the ideal venue for positioning your company and its products and services for success. Re-serve your space early—the expo floor is filling up quickly!

Whatever the resources—from inter-national expertise to enhanced features at the annual meeting—ETA is commit-ted to helping you grow your business.

Please keep in touch with us as we continue to move ETA into the future. I look forward to seeing you soon.

Kind Regards,Jason OxmanChief Executive OfficerElectronic Transactions Association

Great Things Lie Ahead for ETA

View Karen’s testimonial video

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inDusTrYnews Poor User Experience to Blame for Shopping Cart Abandonment While the majority of smartphone and tab-let owners (68 percent) have attempted to make a purchase on their device, two-thirds (66 percent) failed to complete a transac-tion due to obstacles encountered during checkout, according to the 2013 Mobile Consumer Insights study from Jumio, Inc. Of those respondents who failed to make their purchases, 41 percent said the check-out was too difficult on their device, and 23 percent said they failed to make a purchase

because it would not go through. Other causes for shopping cart aban-

donment include gender factors and secu-rity concerns. Men are more likely to make mobile purchases than women, with 74 percent of male smartphone owners hav-ing attempted to make a mobile payment, compared to only 62 percent of females. Additionally, women are more likely to not complete a mobile payment due to secu-rity issues, with 56 percent saying they did not feel secure entering their credit card information. With regard to age, 62 percent of those 55 or older claimed to have con-cerns over the security of their credit card information.

Clearent named Mark Sundt as chief technology officer, and was named the third fastest growing private company by the St. Louis Business Journal. ControlScan will partner with Bridge Point Com-munications to bring PCI compliance to Australia. CSR will partner with My Clear Reports (MCR) to make CSR’s patented PCI ToolKit and patent-pending CSR Breach Reporting ToolKit available from the company’s MCR virtual business center. Dejavoo Systems announced the development and certification of CrossCheck’s check guaran-tee applications on the Vega (V Series) product line terminal. First Data announced VSoft will sell First Data debit processing services and STAR ATM and POS access to clients. Gemalto was selected by Merchant Customer Exchange to build its plat-form. MasterCard launched MasterPass digital wallet in Canada to help shoppers expedite the online checkout process. Merchant Warehouse is cosponsoring a $1 million development fund with LevelUp to make mobile payment apps less costly for merchants and will partner with LightSpeed, an Apple-based POS and inventory management system. Mercury Payment Systems announced Nick Nayfack joined the ETA Mobile Payments Committee. Moneris Solutions partnered with LightSpeed to provide Canadian retailers with an integrated mobile payment management solution. PayPros deployed PayPros Innovo, a comprehen-sive “Payments as a Service” platform. SecureNet Payment Systems announced the launch of its mobile payments API libraries for iOS developers, and named Nish Modi as vice president of product. Tranzlogic will partner with Aperia Solutions to provide data analytics technology to more than 3 million merchants. TSYS Merchant Solutions launched TSYS Pay in Your Currency and Shop in Your Currency multi-currency solutions, powered by Planet Payment. WorldPay US announced it successfully completed Visa EMV acquirer testing, and compatibility certification of the VeriFone VX 520 countertop payment system.

AROUND THE HORN

Shipping costs

Quick and easy payments

Easy to navigate site or app

Best products

Access to customer reviews

Web chat customer support

Remote QR code ordering

Simple view, especially on small screens

Interactive video product demonstrations

Filtering my search based on fea-tures that matter most to me

Best Price 72%

59%

41%

38%

36%

30%

22%

19%

10%

9%

4%

The amount of funds loaded on general purpose reloadable prepaid debit cards jumped to $76.7 billion between 2008 and 2012, according to Mercator Advisory Group. The Group predicted $168.4 billion will be loaded on such products by 2015.

fast FACT

Infographic

Price Top Factor in Mobile and Online Purchasing More than 6,000 international consumers and 60 global retailers were asked: When purchasing on-line or via mobile device, which in-fluences your purchase decisions?

Source: Accenture Seamless Retail Study 2013


NEwS FRoM ThE ASSocIATIoN

n ETA Launches Payment Processor Council ETA’s Board of Directors created the Processor Council as a new forum to serve the needs of ETA members. Intended to be the voice of the nation’s leading payments processors, the Processor Council will focus on maximizing the value, efficiency, and security delivered by the payments industry to its customers through the development and communication of recommendations to help navigate emerging technologies, standards, and regulations.

“The establishment of the Processor Council will further ETA’s mission of growing the payments industry on behalf of its member companies,” said CEO Jason Oxman. “The Pro-cessor Council has a unique opportunity to mobilize ETA’s productive and comprehensive relationship with more than 500 member companies, including the nation’s largest pro-cessors and the card networks, together with ETA’s experienced and knowledgeable staff and unparalleled network of industry volunteers to channel the voice of the processor community.”

n ETA Announces International Acquiring Forum EventTogether with Global VisionGroup and industry consultant Linda S. Perry, ETA announced the launch of the International Acquiring Forum, a new educational and networking event that will take place in London Sept. 17-19, 2013, at the Millennium Gloucester Hotel and Conference Center. The forum will bring together industry experts and leaders to address issues of importance for acquirers, banks, ISOs, processors, and suppliers.

CALENDAR :International Acquiring ForumMillennium Gloucester HotelLondon, UK September 17-19, 20132013 ETA Strategic Leadership ForumMontelucia Resort & SpaScottsdale, AZOctober 15-17, 20132014 ETA Annual Meeting & ExpoMandalay Bay Hotel Las Vegas, NVApril 8-10, 2014

Accept Checks TodayHenderson, NVwww.acceptcheckstoday.com

Advanced Technology Group (ATG)Overland Park, KSwww.atginfo.com

Anovia Payments LLCIrving, TXwww.anoviapayments.com

Bankcardlaw.comWashington, DCwww.bankcardlaw.com

BillGuard Inc.New York, NYwww.billguard.com

Casio America Inc.Dover, NJwww.casio.com

CSI Enterprises Inc.Bonita Springs, FLwww.csicorporatecard.com

Eminence Capital LLCNew York, NYwww.eminencecapital.com

Energy Advantage Inc.Norwalk, CTwww.cardcharge.us.com

Eye4FraudBrooklyn, NYwww.eye4fraud.com

Fraud Shields Inc.Brooklyn, NYwww.fraudshields.com

Genesis Merchant SolutionsHouston, TXwww.genesismerchant.com

Intel Corp.Chandler, AZwww.intel.com

InterceptEFTFargo, NDwww.intercepteft.com

InterPoynt LLCAtlanta, GAwww.interpoynt.com

Meracord LLCTacoma, WAwww.meracord.com

nCLOSE Inc.Westlake Village, CAwww.posenclosures.com

OneGo Inc.Santa Monica, CAhttps://onego.com/

OTI America Inc.Iselin, NJwww.otiamerica.com

PAAYCedarhurst, NYwww.paay.co

PaylianceColumbus, OHwww.payliance.com

Randon Holdings LLCNashville, TN

SafePay Direct Inc.Phoenix, AZwww.safepaydirect.com

T SquaredDenver, COwww.tsquaredgroup.com

T-Tech LLCCharlotte, NCwww.ttechpayments.com

UnionPay AmericaJersey City, NJhttp://en.unionpay.com/

Venable LLPWashington, DCwww.venable.com

Vision Payment Solutions LLCPortland, MEwww.visionpayments.com

New Members ETA is pleased to welcome the following companies to its membership. To inquire about a membership with ETA, please contact Del Baker Robertson, director of membership and marketing, at [email protected].

The FUTURE of Payments is HERE™

April 8 – 10, 2014 Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino Las Vegas


KE Y NOTES8 Both MasterCard and Visa are pursuing technology initiatives to

support debit EMV transactions, with the goal to advance the U.S. marketplace toward next-generation payments.

8 Some major merchants say the conversion to EMV will impose an extraordinarily hefty financial burden while doing little to curb fraud.

8 More sophisticated tokenization technologies, in which nonsensitive substitute values replace credit card numbers and other sensitive data during the processing of transactions, are becoming available.

[ COVER STORY ]

on the Move Security

EMV, tokenization, and encryption continue slow march to acceptance

By Julie Ritzer Ross


Data security continues to evolve along with payment models, with developments occurring around the EMV (Europay/MasterCard/Visa) standard, tokenization, and encryption alike.

Consider EMV adoption. Acquirers, for the most part, have met the card networks’ mandate to support merchant acceptance of EMV transactions. (The deadline was April 1, 2013.) Major issuers, such as

Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, U.S. Bank, American Express, and Wells Fargo, have begun to issue EMV cards.on the Move

“Things are progressing well,” says Carolyn Balfany, senior vice president-group head, U.S. product delivery, for MasterCard. “We have to our advantage the wind at our backs from the experi-ence of other markets that have made the transition.” The “lion’s share” of acquirers have had their solutions fully tested and certi-fied ready to accommodate EMV as prescribed, she adds. Just as significantly, “dozens” of issuers have moved up their plans to roll out EMV cards to other consumers, encouraged by positive reac-tion to chip-and-PIN cards provided to cardholders who frequently travel to areas where EMV has taken hold.

Recent technology developments are expected to push adop-tion as well. Both MasterCard and Visa are pursuing technology ini-tiatives to support debit EMV transactions. MasterCard has opened its debit technology standard, allowing acquirers to brand transac-tions originating from the Maestro AID (application identifier) for all debit networks within the U.S. The move allows more financial institutions to immediately begin issuing EMV cards across their portfolios, rather than waiting for a new solution.

For its part, Visa is now making some of its EMV chip tech-nology available to acquirers in conjunction with a generic, un-branded AID, which will “advance the U.S. marketplace” toward next-generation payments, including mobile payments, said Jim McCarthy, Visa’s global head of product, in announcing the move. Visa aims to simplify EMV chip implementation for debit trans-actions; reduce migration costs; increase flexibility for issuers, acquirer processors, and merchants; and streamline the imple-mentation of secure EMV chip technology.

As of mid-March 2013, 10 of 17 U.S. debit networks had agreed to use a common U.S. debit AID and to work with Discovery Financial Services to license the D-Payment Application Specifications (D-PAS) as a common framework for a U.S. chip-and-PIN debit solution.

“Based on our experience around the globe,” these initiatives constitute “good steps to continue the momentum of the U.S. market’s migration toward EMV,” says Jane Cloninger, director of global financial services and payments consultancy Edgar Dunn & Co. They fit the “need to cooperate and find a common way to support debit transactions.”

Merchants Lag on EMVOn the merchant side, some large companies, like Walmart, already accept EMV cards. And many others, including those that have al-ready deployed EMV-enabled terminals but not chip-and-PIN tech-nology, have committed to accepting EMV prior to the October 2015 liability shift date.

But the liability shift won’t be sufficient to bring all merchants into the EMV camp, at least on or before October 2015, when liability for fraud shifts to merchants that do not process at least 75 percent of their transactions on an EMV-enabled platform, or even October 2017 (the liability shift date for petroleum retailers).

One stumbling block is the belief among certain major mer-chants that the conversion to EMV will impose an extraordinarily hefty financial burden while doing little to curb fraud.

“Our actual fraud rate is so small that it’s hardly worth mention-ing,” Gavin Waugh, vice president and assistant treasurer, Wendy’s International Inc., said during a panel discussion at NACHA’s Pay-ments 2013 conference in mid-April. “Even if we pay the fraud liability, it’s a whole lot cheaper than putting in (EMV) terminals. Plus, (it seems inconceivable that) we’re going to spend an ex-

ONE STUMBLING BLOCK IS THE BELIEF AMONG CERTAIN MAJOR MERCHANTS THAT THE CONVERSION TO EMV WILL IMPOSE AN EXTRAORDINARILY HEFTY FINANCIAL BURDEN WHILE DOING LITTLE TO CURB FRAUD.

Security


traordinary amount of money on EMV, to protect a card-present environment, when the world is going to a card-not-present envi-ronment.” Waugh noted that for quick-service restaurants, “special difficulties” inherent in chip card acceptance constitute another obstacle to EMV migration—for example, the need to equip drive-through lanes to handle the chip cards, which must be inserted into a terminal and left there for the duration of each transaction.

Rue A. Jenkins, assistant vice president, treasury, for Costco Wholesale Corp., who served on the same panel, added that he’s less worried about counterfeit card fraud, which EMV address-es, than about fraud stemming from increasingly frequent data breaches. “That’s a bigger concern,” he said, pointing to “huge exposure” from malware stealing card credentials.

For some big merchants, minimizing the risk of non-EMV ac-ceptance takes a back seat to other technology upgrade priori-ties. “They don’t have a mandate, so it will be a decision each will make about if—and when—they fully migrate to EMV,” says Randy Vanderhoof, director of the EMV Migration Forum, a cross-industry body focused on aligning the EMV implementation steps required for global and regional payment networks, issuers, pro-cessors, merchants, and consumers to ensure the successful in-troduction of more secure EMV-based technology in the United States.

With the exception of people who frequently travel to desti-nations where EMV is now mainstream, consumers still see few compelling reasons to demand chip-and-PIN cards, maintains Rob Bertke, senior vice president, research and design, for Sage Pay-ment Solutions. Until customers’ perspectives change, merchants aren’t likely to follow with expensive hardware investments, de-spite pressure from processors and acquiring banks.

Meanwhile, a desire to maintain a competitive edge against larger players and peer pressure from similar-size, more techno-logically progressive organizations is driving a small number of small- to medium-sized merchants to look at EMV acceptance. In addition to cost concerns, these merchants are being stymied by a lack of understanding about what EMV means to them in terms of compliance, system upgrades, liability, and fraud reduction, notes John Berkley, senior vice president, product management, for Mercury Payment Systems.

Processors and others are trying to help. For example, Epicor Payment Exchange has developed written materials and webi-nars aimed at educating merchants about the benefits of EMV, the financial risks from neglecting to get on board with EMV, and how the liability shift schedules work.

[ COVER STORY ]

“PROCESSORS ARE RECOGNIZING THAT THE

ONUS IS ON THEM TO PUT EVERYTHING IN LAYMEN’S

TERMS AND WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF BUSINESS

OPERATIONS.” —MATT MULLEN, EPICOR

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“Processors are recognizing that the onus is on them to put everything in laymen’s terms and within the context of business operations,” says Matt Mullen, Epicor general man-ager and head of product management.

New mobile EMV-compliant solutions are coming on the market—and by virtue of their affordability and flexibility, they have the potential to shorten the POS upgrade cycle, which is about four years. “There will always be a few large organizations that will hang on to using the older ways of the brick-and-mortar-type legacy units,” says Chris Ciabarra, co-founder and chief technology officer at Revel Systems. “But there is no doubt that those types of systems are on the decline and on the way out of popularity, with EMV-ready mobile POS technologies being adopted” and small- to medium-sized businesses primed to take the plunge.

In January 2013, Revel Systems unveiled the first EMV-enabled POS solution to operate on an iPad platform. Rev-el created the product in response to demand for mobile, non-legacy systems with the capability to handle chip-and-PIN transactions, Ciabarra notes. At around the same time, Ayden, another solutions provider, launched the Shuffle, an EMV-compliant system for chip-and-PIN-based payment ac-ceptance on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets via a Bluetooth connection.

Similarly, VeriFone recently announced the addition of several EMV-capable, portable mobile payment acceptance systems. The lineup includes the PAYware Mobile e105, a PCI PTS (Pin Transaction Security)-debit approved solution that enables smartphones, tablets, and other smart devices to function as mobile POS terminals; the VX 675, an all-in-one, EMV-capable wireless hand-held device well-suited for restaurant, hospitality, delivery, transportation, and similar “pay anywhere” applications; and the VX 660 3G, a portable, EMV-ready system with 3G wireless communication speed. Also introduced was the VX 520 LE, an entry-level device that can be combined with the vendor’s VX 805 PIN pad to pave the way for what the company deems an “affordable” EMV migration path.

Encryption and Tokenization Move ForwardElsewhere in the security landscape, more sophisticated tokeni-zation technologies, in which nonsensitive substitute values replace credit card numbers and other sensitive data during the processing of transactions, are becoming available. Stateless tokenization technologies that utilize derived tokens are one example. Derived tokens can be recalculated from secret values, so they don’t need to be stored in a database where they may be vulnerable to hacking.

Voltage Security’s Voltage Secure Stateless Tokenization (Voltage SST)—offered as part of the company’s SecureData enterprise security platform—is unlike first-generation tokeni-zation options. Its configuration eliminates not only the need to maintain a token database, but to store sensitive data at all. The end result, according to the company, is a reduction in costs and in the scope of users’ compliance with the PCI


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POS

Accounting

Customer DataManager

Bill Pay

SmartPhones

Recurring

Tablets

Websites

Inventory

In-StoreComputers

[ COVER STORY ]

DSS, as well as a decreased potential for data breach.

“The SST method is truly a paradigm shift in primary account number (PAN) tokenization,” says Kennet Westby, presi-dent of Coalfire Inc., an independent IT governance, risk, and compliance firm. “Memory access is many thousands of times faster than disk access. By remov-ing the database and practically eliminat-ing disk input/output, performance is in-creased dramatically over conventional tokenization solutions.”

New iterations of tokenization solu-tions designed specifically for mobile commerce indicate a move away from technologies wherein actual payment ac-count credentials are linked to 2D codes or other tokens that are then scanned at the point-of-sale. Such an approach is said to be highly vulnerable to fraud because a copy or screen grab of the code can be used to make payments. Paydiant, a provider of white label mobile payment, mobile wallet, and offer-redemption plat-forms, has been awarded a patent for a

solution that will utilize a unique trans-action tokenization approach wherein a checkout token captured via key entry, image scanning, NFC, RFID, Bluetooth, or other technology would be used to as-sociate an end user and their payment accounts with a transaction.

Additionally, the industry is seeing ac-tivity around the use of a combination of tokenization and encryption to add another layer of security to EMV transac-tions. “Tokenization and encryption play a significant role in the security of EMV transactions,” says Mike English, execu-tive director, product development, at Heartland Payment Systems. “EMV does a great job of reducing the opportunity for copying cards and for customer veri-fication through chip-and-PIN. Where it falls short, and where we will see the benefits of tokenization and encryption, is when EMV transactions ‘leave’ the ter-minal or PIN pad. With tokenization and encryption, it happens in the clear.”

Heartland Payment Systems intends to encrypt contactless and contact EMV

transactions to protect cardholder infor-mation via its E3 end-to-end encryption technology, as well as with return tokens to the point-of-sale for merchant reference in either random or format-preserving for-mats. Heartland is also working with sev-eral still-unnamed suppliers to incorporate EMV, E3, and its tokenization technologies into mobile payment solutions.

As EMV takes hold, tokenization and encryption—in ever more sophisticated forms—will assume an even more im-portant role in payment security. “In markets where EMV has been adopted, the pattern of data theft has shifted from the point-of-sale, magnetic stripe side to e-commerce,” says Doug Klotnia, Trust-wave’s executive vice president, com-pliance and risk. “That this will happen here is inevitable,” supporting the need for continued development in many fac-ets of security technology. TT

Julie Ritzer Ross is a contributing writer to Transaction Trends. Reach her at [email protected].


The term “Big Data” has been buzzing around for a couple of years. As the world goes increasingly digital, the amount of data being collected, intentionally or as a by-product of consumer activity, is growing exponentially. According to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, 5 exabytes of data are created every two days. To put that in context, that is equal to the amount of data created from the beginning of civilization through 2003.

A 2011 McKinsey & Co. study concluded that, “The use of Big Data will become a key ba-sis of competition and growth for individual firms. From the standpoint of competitiveness and the potential capture of value, all companies need to take Big Data seriously. In most industries, established competitors and new entrants alike will leverage data-driven strate-gies to innovate, compete, and capture value from deep and up-to-real-time information.”

The hypothetical or potential uses of all this data have created excitement, but how

KE Y NOTES8 Companies of all sizes and in all industries

are leveraging data-driven strategies to innovate, compete, and capture value from deep and up-to-real-time information.

8 The potential of Big Data has spurred the growth of supporting companies that offer guidance, processing power, and tools to put the power of Big Data in reach.

Big Data Gets RealHow three companies are harnessing mounds of

data to improve customer service, retain cardholders, innovate products, and more

By Rona Distenfeld

[ FEATURE ]


does that translate into real, on the ground, use for you? Big Data doesn’t have a single definition, points out Bob Meara, senior ana-lyst at Celent. “The term remains trendy and ill-defined, and means different things to different people.” It may be structured data, such as transaction records, or unstructured input, such as customer comments. It may use only internal records or survey a wide swath of industry information. It may include social media, newspaper articles, and complaint files. It may involve custom analytics or rely on an off-the-shelf engine.

Its uses are as varied as its sources. Big Data is helping com-panies reduce fraud and improve customer satisfaction, innovate products and decide where to allocate resources, reduce customer service calls and break down institutional silos, identify customers at risk of switching, and much more. Yet, as Meara says, “in most companies, Big Data is only contributing a fraction of its potential because its use is limited to small projects pushed by lone individu-als within a single department.”

The handful of companies already using Big Data successfully share a common focus: a data-driven strategy that comes from the top down—one that sets specific goals or identifies clear problems and then defines Big Data criteria to address them. This capability is not limited to giant companies anymore, either. The potential of Big Data has spurred the growth of supporting companies that offer guidance, processing power, and tools to put the power of Big Data in reach of almost any business, from a mid-size payments processor to a new online merchant.

Big banks and big retail merchants have been at the forefront of Big Data development. This is partially because they already have the computer power in place and have been gathering and using

customer data for years at some level. “Banks like to talk about ‘a 360-degree view of the customer’ although most continue to silo their data by department and have yet to achieve this,”Meara says. In fact, a 2012 Economist Intelligence Unit survey found that when asked about barriers to Big Data, access to other depart-ments’ data was one of the chief barriers cited by executives in every industry.

The potential uses of Big Data are almost limitless, but today the actual applications focus on traditional business goals: reducing fraud and growing sales, with customer service being included in that mix. A handful of companies are already using Big Data to achieve measurable results.

Case Study One: IsRACARd GROUPIsracard,the leading card issuer in Israel, is owned by Bank Hapoalim, Israel’s largest bank, and brings together four compa-nies with activities in credit payments. The group has issued 3.5 million cards under multiple brands, including Isracard, Master-Card, Visa, American Express, and affiliate and cobranded club cards, and has differentiated itself in the market by focusing on customer service, taking advantage of new technologies and win-ning awards for its efforts.

Isracard used a vendor-provided Big Data solution to address four key objectives: increasing the up-sell of new products and services, reducing service costs, expanding the adoption of self-service solutions, and continuing to excel at quality customer ser-vice, explains Meara, who worked on an Isracard study for Celent.

A logical starting point was Isracard’s call center. Despite be-ing recognized for having far shorter wait times than other Israeli companies, Isracard wanted to find ways to make the customer experience even better while also addressing its other goals. Ana-lyzing call history, the company found that more than one third of the volume centered on transaction-level inquiries. If Isracard could find a way to deflect the majority of these calls away from the customer service representatives, it could reduce service costs, one of the company’s goals. However, it would have to be done in a way that also helped Isracard achieve its other goals.

The company employed a system from Personetics called Digi-tal Banker. This predictive virtual assistant anticipates customer banking needs and offers relevant solutions by using information about each customer, customer transactions, geolocation, and other internal and external data. This provides a high probability of understanding a customer’s intent when a query is initiated.

Digital Banker’s interface uses a familiar chat format. Customers get a seamless, intuitive chat experience that automatically bumps to a live CSR in the cases that fall outside the predictive program’s scope. Isracard was able to quickly and easily implement the pro-gram’s robust, prebuilt analytics models with minimal effort.

It worked. In the first three months, a significant number of Isracard’s active online and mobile users interacted with the sys-tem. More than half continue to use it, and 90 percent of the users were able to successfully resolve their call issue without speaking to a live representative. In addition, 45 percent of product/service recommendations made by Digital Banker resulted in user conver-sion—far higher than a typical marketing campaign.

[ FEATURE ]


The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Con-sumer Protection Act of 2010 created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Many in the financial services arena, especially credit card issuers, saw this as just another in-trusive layer of government oversight. An unex-pected benefit, however, was the creation of a consumer complaint database that could be a useful tool for these same companies.

All credit card issuers and merchants have their own customer complaint data. Customer cards, letters, surveys, emails, and transcripts of customer service calls provide valuable input. With the publication of the CFPB data, individ-

ual organization data can be placed in context against specific competitors, making for bigger data than a company would have on its own.

One company, Beyond the Arc, has taken this a step further, by adding data gleaned from social media. This provides more detail on the specifics of complaints that the CFPB database puts into five basic categories: billing disputes, interest rates, credit reports, account closing issues, and identity theft. It turns bigger data into Big Data.

CEO Steven Ramirez sees his clients using this data to prioritize problem areas and start analyzing root causes. “The next step is to go

deeper,” says Ramirez. “Banks can look at this data and ask themselves why they have a poor ranking in billing disputes when a key com-petitor has a much better record. This is where the ‘voice of the customer’ really comes in. The answers are usually there, buried in the bank’s data. They just haven’t had the know how to get those answers, and that’s where our analyt-ics come in.”

So far, Beyond the Arc is the only company mining and enriching the CFPB complaint data this way. The ongoing focus on Big Data for the next competitive edge ensures they won’t be alone for long.

From Big Headache to Big Data

Case Study Two: dIsCOVERRecognizing that keeping customers from jumping ship is an im-portant issue for merchant acquirers, Discover “has developed an innovative use of Big Data to solve merchant attrition problems,” says David Fish, senior analyst at Mercator Advisory Group. “The most effective time to take retention steps is before they tell you they’re leaving, and Discover used Big Data to identify risk factors.”

In late 2012, Discover Network launched the Merchant Attri-tion Predictor Model, a patent-pending product enabling acquirers to see key changes in a merchant’s behavior, which may indicate they are about to switch acquirers. To create the model, Discover analyzed five years of its own data, studying merchant behavior over time to develop metrics to indicate if a merchant is about to end the relationship. Using these metrics, merchants were given a score to indicate how at risk they are of leaving.

The volume and quality of Discover’s merchant data over mul-tiple portfolios gave statistical validity to the data that is applicable

to other, smaller merchant acquirers. Acquirers can run their own data through this predictive model to score their customers, then use the scores to focus retention efforts on those accounts most at risk. The model also provides information to help acquirers better understand their merchants and refine their retention strategies for greater success.

Case Study Three: FEEdZAIIt’s no secret that as the volume of online and mobile transactions grows, so does the incidence and risk of fraud. With transaction settlements made next day in most cases, the chance to detect and prevent a fraudulent transaction is limited.

The giant payment processors have the processing power and expertise to help their equally big clients manage this risk using their own data and analytics. Feedzai has developed a way for small-er brands, payments processors, and online/mobile merchants to easily apply this same Big Data solution.

“Processors used to see just the amount, the buyer’s name, and a merchant code,” says Nuno Sebastiao, CEO of Feedzai. “That was enough when a buyer was standing in a store, but it’s not enough in the online/mobile world. Web browsers capture a lot more data that can help merchants and processors verify a transaction, but you have to be able to use that data in real time.” For example, a fraudster sets up a merchant code to run stolen cards through. Feedzai’s soft-ware can detect whether the IP address is valid (if the merchant is in Memphis the IP address should also be in Memphis, not Dallas), and also look at a dozen other criteria before validating the purchase.

“Fraud today is very organized,” says Sebastiao. “If you have enough data, and know what to do with it, you can spot patterns that can help you minimize your risk.” A large part of the problem for small and mid-size processors and merchants has been data volume and analytical skill—or the lack of these key things. Feedzai allows them to enrich their universe with a much larger data set, improve their data quality, and put it to work for their actual needs without having to be data or fraud experts.


Common errors and omissions, such as putting a state in a country code field, or leaving out a merchant code, would typically flag a transac-tion as bad even if it wasn’t. Feedzai’s larger data set and analytics imme-diately give greater perspective to each transaction so that if other criteria are good the transaction can go forward.

Feedzai designed its original fraud detection tools for online use, and is now building on that success with a new tool specific to the mobile market. “It’s a newer arena and the volume of data specific to mobile transactions is still relatively small,” says Sebastiao. “It’s rapidly growing, however, so we’ve developed a tool mobile merchants can easily embed to get the same grade of technology that the big payments processors use to validate a transac-tion. We’re making it available for free for six months to more quickly collect

a relevant body of data that will ultimately make the tool even more useful from a merchant’s point of view.”

These real-world examples share a key factor the Economist survey found in all companies successful-ly using Big Data: They had clear goals and priorities that were part of a larger strategic initiative before

they designed their data solution. The use of Big Data may have been pioneered by mega banks and retailers, but

today a growing number of third-party solutions can be scaled to any size merchant or processor. It’s no longer pie-in-the-sky; it’s here. TT

Rona Distenfeld is a contributing writer to Transaction Trends. Reach her at [email protected].

[ FEATURE ]

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Startup Stories: Tuition Management Systems»

Craig Lockwood likes to say that people tend to think in black or white when it comes to decid-ing whether they can afford to

pay tuition for their children’s education.“Either I have $30,000, or I have to

borrow it,” he says, describing parents’ thought process. And that’s where his company, Tuition Management Systems (TMS), got its start.

Lockwood has served as managing di-rector/product strategy for more than two years, but has spent nearly 10 years at the company. He says people don’t think in terms of using a combination of savings, current income, and borrowing to pay for that education—part of what TMS helps them to do.

In short, TMS started out by creating interest-free payment plans. Customer ser-vice staff in TMS’s call center helped explain and simplify the plan, giving the company a leg up on the competition. As the cost of tuition increased and student debt became more of an issue, both in terms of personal

finance and national politics, TMS’s services grew in demand.

“Every dollar you put on a payment plan is a dollar you’re not borrowing,” says Lockwood.

Over the years, TMS’s business model has evolved, providing a wider array of services for its clients. It’s not a traditional ISO and, for the most part, charges a con-venience fee on large transactions—for example, a five-figure tuition payment. However, it also gives schools an option to be charged a merchant fee on smaller transactions like those made by alumni who donate using a credit or debit a card.

TMS is registered as a payments facilita-tor and, as such, sets up submerchant ac-counts for each of its schools. As a member of ETA, it deals in products such as prepaid cards and helps to prepare web-based por-tals for its clients that may be re-branded to help those clients accept payments. TMS also sells its software to some of its clients to allow those schools to create their own payment plans for students.

Tuition Management Systems brings multiple solutions to colleges, K-12 schools, and even

parents, students, and alumniBy John Manasso

Tuition Management SystemsWarwick, Rhode IslandFounded: 1985Annual Processing Volume: $4 billionEmployees: 120

Schooled on Payments


Located in Warwick, Rhode Island, with about 120 employees, TMS is owned by First Marblehead, an educational fi-nance company. It was privately held un-til 2007. Lockwood oversees the product and operations and is two levels below First Marblehead’s CEO. Carl Firlings, managing director/national sales, reports under a similar structure.

TMS handles about $4 billion annually on behalf of its 750 client schools with its average ticket being about $1,200. (About 600 of those schools—mostly higher-cost institutions—are on the convenience fee model, Lockwood says.) About $1.5 bil-lion of that $4 billion represents auto-mated clearing house, or ACH, payments.

Diverse CurriculumThese days, as the needs of TMS’s cli-ents have expanded, so has its business. Whether the client is a private school whose students run from kindergarten to 12th grade or a university, TMS has found clients asking it to expand its services in a variety of areas.

“We’re doing portals for things like summer camps,” Lockwood says. “We’re doing portals for alumni giving. We’re putting portals up for a lot of special

events. Think of graduation weekend…. If you’re going to be joining for the alumni meals, if so, what kind of meal do you want: chicken or fish? Are you going to participate in the alumni golf tournament on Saturday?” The list goes on.

Firlings says the sales force focuses on several areas. For example, “we’re trying to build strong relationships so we maintain what we have within our member schools,” he says. “As we add ser-vices or really grow, that’s where we get a lot of our growth—product expansion and more robust partnerships.” The sales force also focuses on prospecting, “where we bring on new member schools based on their needs.”

Because of the increasing complex-ity of the education realm, prepaid cards are becoming part of TMS’s business. That aspect comes into play with regard to refunds. When a student applies for an educational loan with, for example, a uni-versity, the sum often includes more than just tuition, fees, and room and board. It can include living expenses and funds for housing if the student is not living in university housing.

As a result, the university must refund the portion of the loan to the student

to which the university is not entitled. TMS helps the university to manage that transaction, which can be remitted to the student in the form of direct deposit, a check, or a prepaid card.

Lockwood says the issue is especially acute for schools that are governed by U.S. government Title IV laws, which ap-ply to schools that receive Pell grants, Stafford loans, and the like. The schools generally have to refund the money to students within 14 days. This often comes as students are returning to school for the start of the semester and classes are starting up, and the schools want to look out for the students’ welfare.

“Depending on the school, if they’ve got large numbers of unbanked students or under-banked students, then they’ve got the issue of students going out to check-cashing businesses and losing 2 or 3 percent of the refund,” Lockwood says. “It’s a non-core, extremely cyclical activ-ity for these schools and something, in many cases, they’re happy to outsource.”

Learning CurveAs institutions of higher education are in-creasingly roped into non-core functions, TMS is helping them to respond, Firlings says. The company is looking at POS tech-nology with some of its client schools.

“Really, our main buying influences have always historically been the busi-ness side of the house—finance, the con-troller,” he says of the company’s market-ing approach. “We go in and understand what their high-level objectives are from an office standpoint: Are they looking for receivables? Are they looking to improve customer service? It could be retention, recruitment.We’re looking at what they want to do, and we talk about our prod-uct set and how we can help them meet that initiative.”

One might wonder how a company that creates interest-free payment plans on behalf of its clients generates revenue. First, TMS charges fees for those payment plans, which range from $50 to $60 per year or $35 to $45 per semester. Second, it also charges late and other transac-tional fees. Finally, Lockwood says there is some “float” in that TMS accepts funds from the payer and holds them for a time before disbursing them to its client—the

WORDSTOTHEWISEn Be willing to please clients as much as you possibly can. “I think what

has been very helpful for us and gives us some traction is that willingness to go the last mile for the client in a way that is very vertical specific,” says Lockwood. “Schools have invested millions of dollars in Student Information Systems (SIS). So you can have the best payment engine in the world, but if you can’t integrate with this system that they’ve spent all this money on, then it’s very difficult to be successful.”

n Provide a great user experience for clients. “Everybody wants immediate notification,” Firlings says. So TMS is working to make sure “they have an easy, understandable user experience that is tightly integrated and that also is supported by people.”

n Customer service should be provided by real people. “Technology is a requirement, but I think we falsely believe it’s the only answer,” he says. “In higher (education), it definitely has to be part of it, but there are big dollars involved. People still will do their research, but they want to ensure that they’re doing the right thing. They want a call center, someone they can speak to, which is ultimately the most expensive, right? To have human capital. But I think it is what you need for all service or to build that customer service base.”

Startup Stories: Tuition Management Systems»


implication being that it has the ability to earn interest on the $4 billion it processes each year.

But such a business does not come without its headaches. Part of the reason TMS changed from an aggregator model to a payments fa-cilitator was because of chargebacks. TMS re-ceives relatively few but, when it did, it was because of a case of mistaken identity: A payer might not understand that TMS was charging it on behalf of one of its schools and so the payer would deny the charges. By establishing sub-merchant accounts, it rectified that problem.

It’s an example of TMS helping its clients to find solutions—the kinds of solutions it was built on via its customer service.

“Our differentiator in that market became our counseling ability—working with fami-lies,” Lockwood says.“It could be done elec-tronically via our online tool. More likely, it’s done through our call center with one of our education payment advisors: helping a family work through how they were going to pay for education.” TT

John Manasso is a contributing writer to Transaction Trends. Reach him at [email protected].

Company Page Phone Web

Authorize.Net C2 866-437-0491 www.authorize.net

Cynergy Data 2 800-933-0064 www.cynergydata.net

Electronic Payments 1 800-966-5520 www.electronicpayments.com

eProcessing Network, LLC 14 800-296-4810 www.eprocessingnetwork.com

First Data/FDIS 5 800-808-2658 www.ignitepayments.com/transtt

Network Merchants, Inc. 7 800-617-4850 [email protected]

Pax Technology C3 877-859-0099 www.pax.us

Total Merchant Services, Inc C4 888-84-TOTAL x9411 www.upfrontandresiduals.com

Uniform Industrial Corp. 12 510-438-6799 x30 www.uicusa.com

USA ePay 13 866-872-3729 www.usaepay.com

ADVERTISERS INDEX

This essential Guide highlights all of the important players in the mobile commerce industry.

Coming in October:Transaction Trends’ 3rd Annual Mobile Commerce Providers Guide

If your company offers mobile services and you would like to be contacted about the Guide, contact Transaction Trends staff, transactiontrends@ strattonpublishing.com.


Tapping the Deal of the DayHow the likes of Groupon and LivingSocial helped create a mobile payment revolutionBy Greg Cohen

Most people don’t think of elec-tronic payments when they say the word “marketing.” And

they’re right—or at least, they used to be. Until the last few years, the act of paying seemed to have little relation-ship to the marketing funnel. But daily deals from companies like Groupon, Liv-ingSocial, and Bloomspot have changed the dynamics of payment and marketing forever, making the payment into a key element of the marketing ecosystem.

Since Groupon was founded in 2008, marketing and payments have converged. As this connection moves closer—and offers, loyalty programs, and deals become more relevant—the value proposition to consumers and merchants is enhanced. With mobile and online tools, merchants, especially local businesses, can more easily engage customers than with traditional ads. And unsurprisingly, the convergence of mar-keting and payments has completely transformed retail marketing.

Simple Yet ComplicatedConsider the daily deal process. When consumers find a daily deal that inter-ests them, they purchase and redeem it in a store, salon, or restaurant—often one they’ve never visited before or may never have heard of prior to receiving the offer. In fact, that’s exactly what the daily deal sites sell merchants on: bring-ing in new customers through a unique form of marketing that is 100 percent driven by a prepurchased offer.

Yet despite the immediate success with consumers, the redemption pro-cess for daily deals is often a bad expe-rience on the other end. Buying a deal is relatively seamless for the consumer, but retailers have to manually reconcile offers, which can be a time-consuming process at scale.

It became apparent to most that a simplified deal acceptance solution at

the point-of-sale was needed. It sounds simple, but in reality, the POS is extremely complicated and requires the rewiring of the infrastructure with hardware vendors, processors, and service companies. Given the complexity, tying in offers to the POS is truly an amazing challenge that all play-ers need to account for, especially with the proliferation of smartphones.

Daily deal sites have created apps to make it easier for consumers to redeem their deals with their phones. Today, 53 percent of Americans over the age of 12 own a smartphone. Forget the printer—just grab your Droid or iPhone and go. But this still leaves merchants respon-sible for figuring out how to accept the deals. If they just look at an email or a

code and write it down, the merchant is still stuck with a manual process. Businesses are now dealing with the challenge of determining which mobile marketing and payment solutions to of-fer their clients in addition to weighing the costs associated with updating to new POS technology.

The POS ConnectionBecause more and more consumers are becoming comfortable with the idea of buying and redeeming a Groupon with their smartphone, the idea of paying with their phone doesn’t seem to be too large of a leap. It’s a logical progres-sion for the consumer, but accepting the deals electronically requires a significant

ISO COrnerFuture OF the BuSIneSS


upfront investment in new technology from the merchant.

If merchants can connect their POS systems to their customers’ smartphones, they can push offers to consumers right from the POS. If the transactions are com-bined, businesses can accept offers, deals, and loyalty rewards seamlessly through the POS, avoiding the manual complica-tions that daily deals initially represent-ed. This also opens the door for a whole slew of new customer incentives. As smartphones continue to gain mass ac-ceptance and consumers become more aware of the value of mobile deals, this interaction at the POS will become even more important to merchants.

The daily deal, at least in its original incarnation, may not last forever (and in fact, we’re already seeing the early stages of decline). In all likelihood, we won’t need daily deals in the future be-cause merchants will be able to reach

consumers directly and in real-time with offers and incentives that are per-sonalized to each customer’s location, interests, shopping habits, and more.

Daily deals brought marketing and payments together, paving the way for a better consumer experience—driv-ing value for both merchants and cus-tomers through the power of mobile

technology. We look forward to a future where payments, marketing services, and the POS sit together, creating value for every stakeholder. TT

Greg Cohen is chief revenue and strategy officer for Merchant Warehouse and a member of ETA’s Board of Directors.

Daily deals brought marketing and payments together, paving the way for a better consumer experience—driving value for both merchants and customers through the power of mobile technology.

Why should I do business with an ETA CPP?ETA CPPs have the knowledge

and experience to recommend

the best and most appropriate

payment solutions for your

business. ETA CPPs have

made a significant personal

(and financial) commitment

to the profession and agreed

to adhere to the Electronic

Transactions Association (ETA)

Code of Conduct.

For more information visit: www.electran.org/cpp


Planet Group Inc. has come a long way since it first opened its doors 17 years ago.

At its onset, the Omaha, Nebraska-based com-pany provided consulting services to the payments space. Today, it focuses on software—specifically, Planet Group’s flagship Acquire360 payment processing solu-tion as well as its Core260 (for customer e-correspon-dence), OptiCard (for gift, loyalty, and stored-value card programs), and Workpoint (for business process manage-ment) products.

That transformation was achieved due to the hard work of its more than 150 staffers and its found-ers, whom Mark Spur-geon, vice president of sales and client relations, describes as “a number of people with payments in-dustry DNA in and around the Omaha area who had left suc-cessful companies and wanted to do their own thing.”

Initially, Spurgeon explains, they wanted to create “a technolo-gy company centered around Y2K activity and NT technology

for rapid development for the Internet.”That desire to think outside the proverbial box helped

push Planet Group’s founders and current staffers to be-come the boutique shop it is today—one that aims to help companies in the payments acquiring realm streamline business processes, reduce costs, and enhance productivity via a diverse portfolio of offerings that includes merchant payment processing, gift and loyalty programs, customer e-correspondence solutions, business process management, and more.

Many other companies boast a similar aim, but “only [Planet Group] and a couple of others enable people to be their own processors, which is what we’re all about right now,” says Spurgeon.

DIY Approach Although Planet Group’s product suite allows ISOs and acquirers “to do their front-end and back-end settlement versus outsourcing it to processors, who also are their com-petition,” Spurgeon explains that not all clients are eager to jump into the deep end of payment processing from the start.

“It depends,” says Spurgeon, who describes the com-pany’s clients as “nontraditional merchant companies” (such as Square, Google, and Amazon) as well as acquirers and ISOs. Some “don’t know what they don’t know, if that makes sense. In those cases, there’s understandably a little bit of fear involved—related to things like, ‘Do I take this on?’ or ‘How do I handle the risk?’

“That’s definitely not something most people come to terms with overnight,” he adds. “It’s a process, and it’s one that we go through with them—to help them decide if they want to take it on, to show them how they can take it on, and then to help them execute so they can succeed.”

Timing is paramount, according to Spurgeon. “Almost everyone wants to do it at some point. So, once they learn about what it takes and what has to be done, all they have to do is decide if this is something they want to do right now or something they want to do in the future.”

The benefit for acquirers, ISOs, and nontraditional mer-chant companies to becoming their own processors is, ac-cording to Spurgeon, more control and “flexibility in what they do because of that control. They can put themselves in a better financial situation—from a banking and settlement perspective—moving forward because they’ll no longer be tied into their competition.”

Staff SavvyAs much as Planet Group’s customers come to the com-pany for the suite of software solutions that help them become their own processors, they also come to the com-pany for its people, says Spurgeon.

“We have people who really understand this stuff. They aren’t just a bunch of technicians; they are business ana-lysts… and merchant-industry [subject matter experts] all the way through,” he assures. “We really feel we’re as much about people as we are about software.” TT

Bryan Ochalla is a contributing writer to Transaction Trends. Reach him at [email protected].

InduStry InsIder

Processing PartnersPlanet Group’s software suite helps ISOs and acquirers become their own processorsBy Bryan Ochalla

“Becoming your own processor is a process, and it’s one that we go through with [our customers]—to help them decide if they want to take it on, to show them how they can take it on, and then to help them execute so they can succeed.” —Mark Spurgeon

June 2013

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