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September 2008 Issue
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Profiting from Brand Convergence |
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Walls that traditionally separated the four major card brands—Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover—are coming down, easing merchant acceptance and ISO sales efforts. Now, merchants can manage all cards through one front-end and one back-end process, and ISOs can be a single-source provider for all the merchant’s needs, notes consultant Drew Freeman, an associate at The Strawhecker Group in Omaha, Nebraska.
For ISOs, the benefits go beyond convenience. Until recently, “when ISOs were reselling Discover acceptance, they could make money, but only a little,” notes Donna Embry, senior vice president for business and product development at Payment Alliance International in Louisville, Kentucky. “Now ISOs can share in the residual stream as well as make a fixed commission.” And in most cases they now own the account, whereas before, Discover and American Express owned the merchant relationship.
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With millions of voters facing foreclosures, bankruptcy, and layoffs, financial issues are in the hot seat this election year. As talk of a recession continues and cries for increased regulation grow louder, all eyes have turned to Barack Obama and John McCain to gauge what might happen should either man become president in 2009.
So far, neither candidate has stated clear opinions on issues facing the electronic payments industry nor voiced his support for or opposition to legislation that faces industry professionals over the next year. Industry experts, however, say that each man’s views on banking in general might speak volumes about how he might feel about the issues facing electronic payments.
And while there shouldn’t be a huge impact on the industry based on this election alone, the person in the Oval Office might set an overall tone in financial services, which can’t be discounted.
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Board of Education: What Top Execs Need to Know About Compliance |
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Although risk management has always been a critical business strategy in the electronic payments space, it’s recently become a major component to ISOs’, acquirers’, and merchant service providers’ (MSPs) survival.
Given an environment that is rife with data breaches and M&A activity, and also suffering the effects of a languishing economy, proper risk management calls for keeping the board of directors abreast of internal and market developments. Left unaddressed, even slight business changes could lead to major consequences, such as merchant attrition, financial loss, and even organizational failure.
“Without a handle on areas of potential risk, directors will have trouble fulfilling their management obligation to stockholders to oversee the operation of the business and support viability going forward,” says Nicholas Baxter, ETA president and senior vice president of First National Bank in Omaha. “Boards cannot be expected to do this” in a vacuum.
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Who's Your Security Guard |
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Although ISOs are responsible for ensuring the merchants they serve process transactions securely and adhere to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), most need to partner with a security consultant to help them do so. But not all consultants are created equal, and a strategic approach to finding and hiring the right partner is critical to achieving best results.
ISOs can start by looking at the specific requirements for hiring a security consultant as well as the benefits of doing so. On the PCI DSS compliance front, Level 1 merchants and Level 1 and Level 2 service providers must use a certified Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) to conduct their annual on-site data security assessments. Internal audit groups can perform on-site assessments, but an officer of the company must sign off on the results. Level 2, Level 3, and Level 4 merchants, as well as Level 3 service providers, can use the PCI Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) to self-certify.
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Growth and development are not just buzzwords to
Viren Rana, president and CEO of ISTS Worldwide,
the retail and electronic payment software firm
he started in 2002. In the past six years, the company has
reinvented itself from a two-bedroom home office with
one part-time employee to a 325-person company with
headquarters in Fremont, California, and two global delivery
centers in India.
“We’ve grown from $52,000 in revenue to projected
revenue of $22 million this year, and we’re on target to
achieve that,” says Rana, who has spent the past 15 years
in the IT industry.
Such success, however, was not the case with Rana’s
previous entrepreneurial attempt.
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Upcoming Events |
| April 17-19, 2012
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