Black Friday, an annual endurance test for consumers and a key performance indicator for retailers, has been getting a digital makeover. In the always-on, always-connected world, the actual day of the event is no longer as important as Black Friday’s brand identity and spirit. In 2014, many deep discounts already took place across America weeks ahead of Thanksgiving and the Friday directly following it.

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On Nov. 20, 2014, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau published a broad set of recommended guidelines for prepaid providers that seek to simplify and standardize the way prepaid products are sold, distributed and supported in the United States. The prepaid community’s initial comments have been mostly high level as industry stakeholders complete their due diligence on the proposed changes and their far-reaching impact on the prepaid ecosystem.

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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently rewrote the prepaid playbook and is actively soliciting reviews. The ambitious work-in-progress offers a sweeping set of guidelines, similar to those established for traditional credit and debit cards, designed to enforce fraud protection, fee transparency, standardized rules and improved account access.

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Retailers in Canada appear to have achieved something those in the United States have failed to achieve: commitments by the Visa Inc. and MasterCard Worldwide units operating there to lower credit card interchange. And they didn’t even have to challenge card brand pricing in the courts or through the government to get it. Canada's Minister of Finance announced on Nov. 4, 2014, a plan under which the Canadian units of MasterCard and Visa will “voluntarily” slash merchant interchange, thereby forestalling government-imposed changes in the card companies’ interchange models.

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The Green Sheet Inc. is delighted to announce that payments industry executive Dale S. Laszig has joined our team as a staff writer. She has been a long-time contributing writer to our publication and, for the 2013-2014 year, she was also author of the Street Smarts^SM column. Dale's areas of special interest include business development, POS technology, marketing, writing and editing. As a consultant, she has helped business owners leverage industry knowledge, best practices and electronic transaction technology to achieve strategic goals. Always willing to put skin in the game, she is an active member of The Electronic Transactions Association, as well as the Women's Network in Electronic Transactions, and has volunteered on multiple committees and at tradeshows to help maintain high standards for the industry as a whole.

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In the wake of the Target Brands Inc. breach that occurred during the 2013 holiday season, it was disclosed that the massive intrusion originated from network credentials stolen by fraudsters from Target's heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) subcontractor. The Home Depot U.S.A. Inc. recently reported that the same attack vector was used in the breach of its systems in early 2014. That breach reportedly resulted in the theft of 53 million customer email addresses; apparently no payment card information. On Nov. 6, 2014, Home Depot said an investigation into the breach, which began in April 2014 and was uncovered in September, discovered that fraudsters stole the user name and password of an unnamed third-party vendor that had access to Home Depot's electronic network.

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A new opportunity is forming for the payments industry in the burgeoning market for multifunction, Internet-connected smart TVs. It's a market driven by consumers who watch less and less network and cable TV and instead stream content online, whether on a desktop, a tablet computer or, more commonly now, a smart TV. Leveraging payment functionality online via smart TVs may thus be the next big delivery channel for payment providers. Boston-based market research firm Strategy Analytics said in its Smart TV Forecast that 76 million smart TVs were shipped globally in 2013, up by 55 percent from 2012. Western Europe is the biggest market so far for smart TVs, according to the research. By 2017, Strategy Analytics said, virtually all mid- to high-end TVs will ship with some form of Internet capability.

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No consumer likes to wait in line. And even a restaurateur, who sees a line out the door every night as a symbol of a restaurant's success and popularity, worries that long lines will eventually turn valuable customers away. Now, with the recent launch of Apple Inc.'s mobile wallet platform Apple Pay, the in-app payment capability is being seized upon as a powerful new way for retailers to reduce lines and wait times by allowing consumers to place orders remotely and pick them up at their convenience. The order-ahead feature can thus have the dual impact of decreasing in-store wait times while also making it a little easier for consumers to navigate their busy lives.

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The mega retailer-backed mobile wallet enterprise Merchant Customer Exchange has had a rough couple of weeks. First MCX received an onslaught of criticism for reminding its merchant partners that they cannot contractually accept the mobile wallet transactions of competitors. Then a data breach of the MCX pilot program reportedly compromised the email addresses of MCX mobile wallet users. Payment pundits have remarked that these are not auspicious developments for a mobile wallet scheme that hasn't even yet launched.

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