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Education

The University of Pennsylvania predicted cash will in- tems of finance through cryptocurrency, and blockchain
creasingly be used for smaller purchases in situations technology unlocks the potential for cashless payments to
where cash is still convenient. For instance, small retail move away from paper money currency.
shops, marketplaces, bars and restaurants may not see a
decrease in cash sales. However, researchers see the logis- A cashless society sounds like a win-win to some, but to
tics changing some. People will get cash from shops, and others it appears complicated and capable of taking the
typical banking services will be provided by machines in personal touch out of face-to-face transactions. Moving
retail stores. This will make cash more efficient and will away from cash will definitely bring new products and
allow people to get access to cash even in areas where services to the table. But some worry it may decrease the
banks and ATMs are not available. need for ISOs, merchant level salespeople and payment
processors to some degree.
A recent report from the Access to Cash Review firm
warned that going cashless too soon could mean millions It's too soon to tell how this evolution will shape the mer-
of people will be financially excluded and at risk of being chant services industry. We will all be watching as we
exploited. This emphasizes the need for banks, govern- move more toward a cashless society. If history has taught
ments and fintech companies to work together to ensure us anything, it's safe to say that the United States won't be
those at a disadvantage – the elderly and unbanked, for on the cusp of going cashless in the near future.
example – are protected when this transition occurs.
Safari Njema!
New technology, new possibilities

For those of us working in credit card processing, it is in- Dee Karawadra is president and CEO of Impact PaySystem, and Emily
deed encouraging news that card-related transactions will Karawadra is the company's chief financial officer. Since 2001, Impact
continue to grow. In addition, other technologies will soon PaySystem has been a leading provider of payment processing technolo-
be mainstream. Blockchain technology, for one, is com- gies and services to merchants throughout the United States. Through
monly associated with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. alliances with payments industry leaders such as Chase Paymentech,
First Data, Buypass, Sage and more, Impact PaySystem offers tailored
In a Feb. 11, 2009, Digital Trends article "What is a block- solutions to meet the unique needs of each merchant. Dee and Emily will
chain" by Jon Martindale, blockchain technology is de- welcome your questions and comments at dee@impactpays.com and
fined as "a database that's validated by a wider commu- emily@impactpays.com, respectively.
nity, rather than a central authority. It's a collection of re-
cords that a crowd oversees and maintains, rather than re-
lying on a single entity, like a bank or government, which Snapshot of Upcoming Events
most likely hosts data on a particular server. A physical
database kept on paper could never be managed by tens
of thousands of peers, but that's where computers, and the
internet, come in.

"Each 'block' represents a number of transactional records,
and the 'chain' component links them all together with a
hash function. As records are created, they are confirmed
by a distributed network of computers and paired up with November 18 - 20, 2019
the previous entry in the chain, thereby creating a chain of
blocks, or a blockchain." Hilton Austin
Austin, TX
For those who want a better sense of what a hash func- https://futurebranches.wbresearch.com/
tion (also known as a hashing algorithm or message digest
function) is, Techopedia explains it well: "A hash function
takes a group of characters (called a key) and maps it to a
value of a certain. Length (called a hash value or hash). The
hash value is representative of the original string of char-
acters, but is normally smaller than the original. Hashing
is done for indexing and locating items in databases be-
cause it is easier to find the shorter hash value than the
longer string. Hashing is also used in encryption."
February 5 - 6, 2020
This type of technology offers the ability for groups and Boston Marriott Copley Place
businesses to create their own digital currencies and sys- Boston, MA
https://northeastacquirers.com/neaa-2020/

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