The Electronic Transactions Association and the Smart Card Alliance have teamed up to produce four webinars intended to help payment professionals sell in vertical markets that use smart card technology.
"We have a division within the SCA called the Contactless and Mobile Payments Council, which produces reports and research on the adoption of contactless payments," said Randy Vanderhoof, Executive Director of the SCA. "We're also beginning to look into mobile payment trends as well, and we felt that ISOs, merchant level salespeople and processors were an ideal audience for us to tailor specific information for," Vanderhoof said.
The first webinar in September 2008 focused on smart cards in mobile payments and near field communication (NFC). The webinar discussed the function of NFC-enabled mobile devices and how mobile wallets and NFC proximity payments are emerging as a new consumer payment type.
The second webinar, shown in November, addressed the fundamentals of smart cards in the payments industry. "The technology fundamentals webinar drew a smaller audience than the first one, but that is typical of executives and sales agents who are more interested in the business applications than necessarily knowing how the technology was developed and how it operates," Vanderhoof said.
"There was an incredibly strong interest from financial institutions and processors, and through our partnership with the ETA, we feel like we're targeting the right audience."
The third free event in the series, shown on Jan. 13, 2009, discussed best practices for contactless and mobile payment implementation. Speakers included Rori Forensic of the ETA; Brent Bowen, Inside Contactless; Dan Loomis, VeriFone; Mohammed Khan, ViVOtech; and Vanderhoof.
They shared practical, timely information required for merchants implementing these payment platforms.
The finale, "Smart cards and payment security," will air Feb. 3, 2009. Vanderhoof said both merchants and consumers still have concerns about contactless and mobile payment security. "We're going to address that issue with subject-matter experts to discuss how chip technology increases security features," he noted.
To view these webinars, visit the SCA's home page at www.smartcardalliance.org, mouse over Alliance Activities in the left-hand menu and click on Web Seminars from the cascading menu that appears.
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