From the monthly archives:

July 2010

Payments 101: What is an Acquiring Bank?

July 27, 2010

The Payments 101 series continues to explore the payments ecosystem members. An Acquiring Bank (commonly known simply as an ‘acquirer’ or ‘merchant bank’) is a licensed member of a card association, such as Visa or MasterCard, which accepts card payments on behalf of a merchant.  The acquirer is a bank or financial institution that serves [...]

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Payments 101: What is a Card Association?

July 21, 2010

The Payments 101 series explores the payments ecosystem members. Card Association A Card Association is a network of card-issuing1 and acquiring banks2 that license bank card programs and perform transactional operations on behalf of its members, including transaction authorizations and processing

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Payments 101: What is PA-DSS Compliance?

July 16, 2010

The Payments 101 series looks at Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS). The Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS) is a set of security requirements developed by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) that govern how payment applications must handle the capture, storage, processing and transmission of sensitive cardholder data. The goal [...]

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Payments 101: What is PCI Compliance?

July 15, 2010

The Payments 101 series explores PCI compliance, its overall requirements and what developers and their merchant customers should be aware of when choosing to accept card payments. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) is a set of comprehensive requirements

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Taking Care of Software Companies: Messages From The Edge

July 14, 2010

Qualification & Integration Support For most application developers, taking on payment integration can feel a lot like facing Everest without a Sherpa. As we emphasized in the previous post in this series, Messages From the Edge: The Necessity of Support, support throughout the entirety of the payment integration lifecycle is key in establishing a lasting [...]

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Payments 101: What is Check Guarantee?

July 12, 2010

The Payments 101 series explores Check Guarantee Check Guarantee is exactly what you might expect based on the name. Simple, right? Acting as a type of insurance for the merchant, Check Guarantee ensures a merchant is paid for

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The Necessity of Support: Messages from the Edge

July 9, 2010

The discussion of technology as it relates to Payments APIs can often overshadow the discussions that represent the greatest import to Software Companies. If technology, in the form of APIs, is the “enabler” of creation of a solution (payment services and value-added services integrated into software) then the Support process is

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Payments 101: What is Check Verification?

July 6, 2010

The Payments 101 series discusses the basics of Check Verification Although the use of paper checks has seen a steady decline with the rise in popularity of electronic payments, the 2007 Federal Reserve Payments Study* reports that a staggering 33.1 billion checks were written in 2006. With so many checks still in circulation, today’s merchant [...]

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