Communities of Practice

Engagement Communities of Practice

Contribute to a Community of Practice

Periodically formed Communities of Practice (COP) invite merchants and other payments stakeholders to address targeted issues and opportunities. The COPs are focused on advocating for change within the payments ecosystem and/or educating merchants on changes that may impact their organizations.

Each COP is open to merchants and other invited stakeholders (e.g. acquirers) who can assist with solving for the COPs objectives. COPs are tactical in nature and conclude when the objectives are achieved.

Active Communities of Practice

Buy Now, Pay Later 

Evaluate the installment and split-pay markets well as identify the players and their various capabilities.

Meeting Frequency: Every three weeks on Monday 10:00-11:00am CT

Omni-Channel

Enable omni-channel commerce with supporting rules and relevant, modern, and effective tools for fraud mitigation. Identify holistic solutions to mitigate fraud in the ecommerce space, addressing all ways customers shop.

EMVCo

Merchant members focus on their influence on EMVCo specifications and related market implementations.

Meeting Frequency: Every other month on the last Wednesday 3:00-4:00pm CT 

Petroleum 

Merchant-only peer networking to identify, collaborate on, and affect solutions to payments industry challenges for petroleum & convenience store merchant professionals.

Meeting Frequency: Every three weeks on Monday 3:00-4:00pm CT

Payments Data 

Collaboration on techniques for conducting payments data analysis and pinpointing crucial and ever-changing payments KPI’s – including the evaluation of alternatives to standard data reporting.

Meeting Frequency: Every two weeks on Wednesday 3:00-4:00pm CT

 

QR Codes

 

Evaluate the QR Code specifications, models, and providers in the market and identify best practices for merchant acceptance and the customer experience. 

Meeting Frequency: Every three weeks on Monday 3:00-4:00pm CT

Paused Communities of Practice

Driving merchant choice in alternative debit routing and education of available options and obstacles to merchant routing choice.

Visit the MAG Learning Center to view COP resources. Member login required.

Determine the primary pain points and best practices for call center payments in light of the increased need to support remote payments.

Visit the  MAG Learning Center to view COP resources. Member login required.

Retired Communities of Practice

Define merchant impact due to the 8-digit BIN expansion in 2022. Develop a checklist for merchants to use when evaluating the impact of 8-digit BINs to their payment systems.

Concluded on January 16, 2020. 

Find Merchant Readiness Guide Here

Work with the networks and acquirers to clarify merchant requirements and timelines. Develop and publish best practices.

Concluded on February 25, 2020. 

Find Merchant Readiness Guide Here

Develop Best Practices for merchants as they attempt to solve for challenges in operating their brick and mortar businesses in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Concluded on August 19, 2020. 

Find Best Practices: Here

Examine existing and emerging companies, processes and methods relevant to the use of Blockchain technology in payments-related activities. Provide pertinent educational material for MAG membership and exchange ideas among MAG and other industry participants involved with the examinations.

Merged into Innovation Committee

Merchant members collaborate with the global networks to increase transparency in what qualification criteria is and merchants receive advanced notice to merchants when changes to qualification criteria are made. Also, merchant members engage with acquirers to get more meaningful data to assist merchants in reducing downgrades and integrity fees. This COP provides a discussion forum to review existing business intelligence/data analytics tools that can be used to pull transaction level data for better analysis on downgrades.

Concluded on January 6, 2021. 

Find Merchant Readiness Guide Here

Get involved in a Community of Practice

Interested in joining an active COP or have an idea for a new COP?

CONTACT THE MAG TODAY

 

The following are required to form a new COP:

  • The issue has defined objective(s) that when achieved will signify the end of the COP.
  • Issue/opportunity impacts several merchants or is a relatively common problem shared by others.  
  • You are a merchant who is willing to help lead the effort and get others engaged.

Community of Practice HUB

Visit MLC to view COP resources. Member Login Required.

MAG LEARNING CENTER

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The Merchant Advisory Group

Driving positive change and innovation in the payments industry that serves the merchants interest through collaboration, education, and advocacy.