Is the Target Breach the Chernobyl of Payments?

Chernobyl is certainly at the top of the list of man-made disasters.  In light of recent events, I’ve been thinking that the Target breach has become the Chernobyl of the payments world. As a group, we Americans never thought that much about payment security – we...

Dispatch from the Smart Card Alliance Payments Conference

For those companies and individuals most committed to building the EMV and NFC ecosystems, the place to be February 3rd through 7th was Salt Lake City where the Smart Card Alliance hosted both an EMV Migration Forum meeting and its annual Payments Summit.  Over 525...

The Age of Context and Security

The news from Target, increasing the number of cards compromised to 70 million and the expansion of data loss to mailing and email addresses, phone numbers, and names, affirms that we’re in a security crisis.  As my colleague Scott Loftesness puts it, card data is,...

The Rise of the Smart Transaction

When I was a baby consultant some twenty years ago, I remember standing in Kepler’s Bookstore in Menlo Park (remember book stores?) thumbing through a paperback book called “The Rules of Marketing”. Rule #7 that said all successful markets will...