The Oct. 20, 2014, launch of Apple Inc.'s near field communication (NFC)-enabled mobile wallet, Apple Pay, has shaken up the payments industry. Apple Pay's two-pronged approach – enabling in-store, contactless NFC payments and in-app, cloud-based purchasing – makes Apple's mobile wallet an exciting integration proposition for many payment firms. One such vendor is Clover Network Inc., the First Data Corp. business unit and POS system-app marketplace provider.

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It is a given that damage to a retailer's reputation is one of the biggest negative outcomes from a big data breach. However, research from the Ponemon Institute LLC said that customer service, or the lack thereof, is a bigger turn-off for consumers than a data breach, and by a wide margin. In April 2014 research entitled The Aftermath of a Mega Data Breach: Consumer Sentiment, 75 percent of almost 800 survey respondents said poor customer service would have the greatest impact on a company's reputation.

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PayPal Inc. is the dominant payment provider for online gamers, according to SuperData Research LLC. With over a quarter of all digital gaming revenue worldwide flowing through PayPal's online payment engine, the question is why. The answer may be taken as a warning for ISOs and merchant level salespeople about complacency pertaining to the growing but still underdeveloped mobile payments realm.

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On Oct. 16, 2014, financial analyst Zacks Investment Research Inc. made prepaid mall innovator Blackhawk Network its "Bull of the Day." In a volatile stock market, Zacks tapped Blackhawk as a strong stock buy opportunity because of its continued growth in the prepaid space.

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Today, Apple Inc. went live with its much anticipated mobile wallet scheme, Apple Pay, in conjunction with the launch of an update to its mobile operating system, iOS 8.1. The tech giant's near field communication (NFC) -enabled mobile payment solution has been praised for its seamless consumer experience, its Touch ID biometric authentication technology, and its in-app functionality, which could render the traditional POS obsolete. But is the end game for Apple Pay that it allows Apple to become its own digital bank?

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On Oct. 17, 2014, President Barack Obama signed an executive order directing that the federal government lead by example and implement chip and PIN technology for government-managed credit and debit card programs. In a speech at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Obama laid out the BuySecure Initiative, which, in part, will mandate chip and PIN as the security standard for such programs as Direct Express, the prepaid debit card program that electronically distributes government benefits to recipients. The initiative will undoubtedly provide more momentum for card issuers and merchants to transition their hardware and software to the Europay/MasterCard/Visa (EMV) chip and PIN protocol.

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The evolution of the recent JPMorgan Chase & Co. data breach that compromised tens of millions of customer details raises more questions than answers. As a follow-up to the news story posted online on Oct. 10, The Green Sheet asked the data security experts quoted in that article for their opinions on what can be done to bolster the data security infrastructure, given the increasing frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks.

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First it was reported that the recent JPMorgan Chase & Co. data breach was limited to JPMorgan. Then it came out that the breach may have targeted a few other big banks. Now it is being widely reported that the hack may have targeted 13 other financial institutions (FIs) as well, including Citigroup Inc., HSBC Bank USA N.A. and E*Trade Financial Corp. The source of the attack is apparently still unknown. In the case of the JPMorgan breach, customer information pertaining to 76 million households and 7 million small businesses was compromised, according to an 8-K filing the bank made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Oct. 2, 2014.

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September 2014 research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia suggests that a new demographic target for general-purpose reloadable (GPR) prepaid debit cards are millennial consumers with middle and high incomes, dubbed "power users." The research, conducted by Phoenix Marketing International, said that moneyed consumers aged 18 to 32 are increasingly adopting GPR cards, representing a new market for the prepaid product other than the so-called unbanked and underbanked, who tend to have lower incomes.

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It seems nearly unanimous that the payments industry is behind Apple Inc.'s mobile payments platform, Apple Pay. That confidence largely rests on the security apparatus Apple erects around mobile payments conducted with the newly launched Apple 6, Apple 6 Plus and the first generation Apple Watch. But is that confidence warranted? Matanda Doss, ‎Chief Executive Officer at gateway operator 5th Dimension Logistics LLC, is not so sure. Doss told The Green Sheet that Apple Pay's combination of near field communication (NFC) technology, transaction tokenization procedures, data storage on the secure element embedded in mobile devices, and Touch ID biometric authentication makes for a secure system, but only up to a point.

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On Jan. 1, 2015, version 3.0 of the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) will reach year one of its three-year lifecycle. When the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) launched PCI DSS v3.0 in January 2014, businesses were given one year to implement the updated global standard. Now that the deadline is fast approaching, interest is picking up in what v3.0 entails. Trustwave, a global data security firm, is on the frontlines of helping secure the networks of merchants and other businesses on the electronic payments value chain against data breaches. As an approved scanning vendor, Trustwave is used by businesses to achieve and validate PCI DSS compliance.

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As the payments infrastructure continues to expand to accept the alternative crypto-currency bitcoin, prepaid card providers are increasingly enabling bitcoin payments. New alternative currency providers like CoinJar, Azteco, Xoin and Piiko are leveraging the prepaid payments infrastructure to enable bitcoin transactions worldwide.

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As a sign of the increasingly competitive and quixotic landscape of the payments industry, online auction site eBay Inc. said Sept. 30, 2014, it will spin off its payments subsidiary PayPal Inc. in the second half of 2015. EBay's decision to unbridle PayPal from its parent company comes as the payments landscape becomes ever more crowded, with Apple Inc.'s foray into mobile payments with Apple Pay and the recent record breaking initial public offering (IPO) of China e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

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