Community

This could be massive.  I've always thought that if the banks got their act together they could use direct credit payments via ACHs (Automated Clearing Houses) to create a P2P service to rival PayPal and indeed the card schemes.  It would need to be global though.  I wonder if Vocalink is thinking along the same lines?  Does anyone know if the founding US banks are talking to non-US banks or ACHs?

Excellent proposal!  The current hybrid world of chip + mag stripe is complicated, less secure and ultimately unsustainable.  The sooner the whole world migrates to EMV chip and PIN the better.  The ECB proposal puts further pressure on the US to embrace EMV chip - surely it is now a question of when not if?

Not much sympathy for the charities, then - and rightly so.  Let's face it, cheques are obsolete and much more efficient and convenient alternatives already exist, in particular direct credits via online banking.  If the charities took the trouble to encourage payment by direct credit and adopted the Payment Council's excellent guidelines in this respect I think they'd be pleasantly surprised - see http://www.paymentscouncil.org.uk/files/payments_council/best_practice_guidelines_for_billers.pdf

It's ironic that worries about card fraud should peak at the moment when, according to the UK Cards Association, UK card fraud has dropped to its lowest level since 2000, thanks largely to chip and PIN, and card and banking fraud accounts for just over 1% of "fraud in all its guises" - see http://www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk/media_centre/press_releases_new/-/page/1323/ 

Oldies unite!

I remember being persuaded by Roger Alexander of Barclaycard that PDQ was the right model to be adopted by EftPos UK - that must have been about 1987.  And before that, I recommended installation of authorisation telephones (weren't they called "transaction telephones" Aidan?) at a client called Club 24 in about 1983.

Happy days!

Really dumb idea.  They now have to duplicate all the expense of getting the right device to the right person.  Why on earth don't HSBC swallow their pride and admit Barclays et all got it right?

To quote a phrase - "the devil is in the details"!

Sorry Brett, but I'm with Aaron on this one.

Hmm...   I'm not so sure.  Establishing a critical mass acceptance infrastructure, irrespective of the technology involved, is never easy in my experience. 

Actually, I think adapting the mobile phone to act as a terminal is a more promising proposition than using it instead of a card, but if you're going to do that, then you may as well get it to read payment cards rather than respond to contactless NFC devices.  Gojmir's Squared example reads mag stripe cards as I understand it, and there's plenty of examples of phones adapted to accept chip and PIN payments.

Brett

I really don't understand what you're saying here:

"but all you'll need to pay is an NFC phone and wireless network access".

Are you suggesting that physical merchants won't need to install contactless POS terminals to accept NFC payments?  Is the idea that they would use NFC phones as terminals and then connect these terminals to existing payments systems via wireless networks?  Or do you have in mind something completely different?  How exactly would it work?

See my recent comment on the subject - in response to Andy Hunter's blog.  HMRC definitely can't receive payments by FPS - or at least they couldn't the last time I tried to pay my VAT.