4 Nonprofit Payment Processing Trends for 2015

To get a handle on what’s in store for 2015, NonProfit PRO rounded up some of the nonprofit industry’s finest, who were kind enough to share their nonprofit trends for 2015. Here are four trends on payment processing.

PAYMENT PROCESSING
Dave Yohe, head of corporate marketing, BillingTree
1. Payments really are going mobile. In North America, the number of mobile transactions has almost doubled since 2013 to 17 percent of all transactions — 1 million people signed up for Apple Pay in the first 72 hours after its October launch! Google Wallet, which has been in the marketplace since 2012, has also come to the forefront of consumer thinking. Payment processors and collectors must incorporate mobile payment options for an increasingly mobile customer base in 2015.

2. EMV is coming. In October 2015, the liability shift of Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV) will take place in the U.S. Any company that processes card payments is required to offer a chip-and-PIN payment system — or risks being liable for counterfeit fraud. Europe rolled out EMV in 2004, switching liability to merchants in January 2005. Ten years later the U.S. is using the same approach to convince merchants to leave magnetic swipe behind. Compliance remains a strict requirement for merchants switching to EMV, and PCI DSS will continue to be an important consideration after making the move to the new payment method.

3. Tokenization — the combat fraud king. Visa CEO Charles Scharf recently told attendees at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2014 Banking & Financial Services Conference that tokenization is “the single biggest change that’s been made in payment networks easily over the past 15 or 20 years.” With the emergence of new payment options such as EMV and mobile, there will be fresh concerns about fraud prevention, but tokenization is the combat fraud king, covering a range of payment channels targeted by fraudsters — card present, card not present and mobile. 2015 will see big players like Visa and MasterCard pushing their tokenization services to payment processors of all sizes — incorporating a range of emerging payment methods.

4. Goodbye passwords; hello biometrics? Iris scanners and fingerprint readers seem more suited to espionage movies than the payment processing industry, but if Visa and MasterCard have their way, both could soon become commonplace. These innovative technologies are known as biometrics. Plans are in place for current online authentication systems such as MasterCard SecureCode and Verified by Visa to possibly be phased out in the near future.