MAG News MAG Releases Payments Roadmap The Merchant Advisory Group (MAG) is pleased to announce its recommendations for a U.S. electronic payments roadmap. more... Fed MPIW releases white paper on mobile In March 2011, the Federal Reserve Bank’s Mobile Payments Industry Workgroup (MPIW) issued a white paper titled "Mobile Payments in the United States: Mapping Out the Road Ahead." more... MAG Releases Mobile Payments Position Paper MAG released a high-level set of policy and technology recommendations to help drive the agenda for the rapidly evolving U.S. payment system. more...

Industry News & Events Fraud From Euronet Breach Hits Mag-Stripe Cards Payment processor Euronet Worldwide Inc. reported on Monday that part of its European businesses sustained a computer security breach late last year. The disclosure is of interest to the U.S. payments industry as it moves slowly toward adoption of EMV chip cards because most European cards have both a chip and a magnetic stripe, and Euronet linked the resulting fraud from its breach only to magnetic-stripe transactions. more... FMI Applauds Merchant Advisory Group Payments Road ARLINGTON, VA – January 20, 2012 – On behalf of the nation’s retail and wholesale grocers, the Food Marketing Institute (FMI) supports efforts by the Merchant Advisory Group (MAG) to bring together all stakeholders in the payments chain to create a single, safe and secure payments standard to the benefit of U.S. businesses and cardholders. more... Visa Provides Guidance for U.S. Chip Adoption We’ve received a lot of positive feedback since Visa announced a roadmap for the U.S. adoption of EMV chip cards and NFC-enabled mobile payment devices. There’s growing consensus in the industry that it makes a lot of sense to encourage investments in chip technology. That’s because it adds a layer of safety to transactions, through the use of dynamic authentication, as well as enhances international card acceptance. And it helps to build an acceptance infrastructure to support mobile payments. Click here to read about Visa recommendations. more... FICO Data Analysis Shows Counterfeit Card Fraud FICO (NYSE: FICO), the leading provider of analytics and decision management technology, today released its analysis of data showing that major shifts have occurred in European card fraud patterns. Analysis done on 55 million active credit cards represented in the FICO® Falcon® Fraud Consortium for Europe showed that counterfeit fraud fell 60 percent between March 2009 and March 2011. more... MAG Releases Payments Roadmap The Merchant Advisory Group (MAG) is pleased to announce its recommendations for a U.S. electronic payments roadmap. more... Squeezed On Interchange Banks Squeeze Pmt Networks Banks are looking beyond consumers to Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. to share the pain of lower interchange fees. Analysts say they expect debit card issuers to pressure the payment networks to lower the fees they charge banks for their services in response to a pending reduction to interchange rates. So-called network fees are what Visa, MasterCard and other card networks charge the banks that issue cards with their logos. The fees cover transaction processing, licensing, overall network maintenance and other costs. Such fees are separate from interchange rates, which the networks set but issuing banks collect, through acquiring banks, from merchants when consumers use debit cards. It is those rates that the Federal Reserve Board has proposed cutting by as much as 90%, according to some estimates, in accordance with the Durbin amendment of the Dodd-Frank Act. Visa Sets Sights On Mobile Pmnts, E-Commerce Continuing its expansion into newer payments-related territory, Visa Inc. intends to focus on increasing its presence in mobile payments, online commerce and funds transfers, Joseph W. Saunders told analysts during a conference call to discuss fiscal first-quarter earnings. more...

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