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Board Member Corner
Chris Priebe An Inside Look at the Last 15 Years With the MAG: A Conversation with Founding Board Member Chris Priebe
Jun 6, 2023Fifteen years ago, Chris Priebe, Senior Director – Treasury Payments and Risk, Southwest Airlines and Vice Chair, MAG Board of Directors, felt fortunate enough to be in the room at Southwest Airlines Headquarters with a few really ambitious merchants who were gearing up for an exciting endeavor. The goal of this endeavor was to make a merchant-led educational and advocacy group, now known as the Merchant Advisory Group (MAG), that would bring merchants together for two semi-annual meetings.
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Evolution in Payments
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Kelly Andrus To surcharge or not to surcharge? Making sense of payment method incentive programs.
May 24, 2023Merchants who want to incentivize customers to use a lower-cost payment method can surcharge credit card transactions, perhaps charge a convenience fee, or even offer a cash discount. But merchants beware: a complex matrix of rules stands between you and the decision. As you begin to consider surcharging, it is important to consider the tangled web of requirements to be evaluated from multiple sources including case law, legislation, court actions, state/city laws, card brand rules, and even your own merchant agreements.
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Membership Update
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Kristi Simonett Membership News: Spring has Sprung…and so has MAG Growth!
May 18, 2023We are excited to share that in addition to our continued MAG member and sponsor growth, our internal team has grown as well. With our focus on growing the MAG, we are targeting several industry verticals for membership growth, including eCommerce, healthcare, insurance, education, hospitality, gaming, fitness, and, as always, the Retail Top 100.
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Innovate Now
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Chris Storbeck Get Involved in Faster Payments
May 3, 2023There is a lot of attention on Faster Payments these days, but there is also a lot of confusion. The United States is in a unique position where, come summer of 2023, there will be two real-time payments networks: The Clearing House (TCH), owned by the banks, and FedNow that the Fed will launch this summer. This competitive landscape highlights the endorsement of real-time payments and will drive innovation.
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CEO Update
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John Drechny Debit Routing: Lowering Your Cost of Payments Acceptance Through Taking Control
May 1, 2023Over ten years ago, Congress passed legislation aimed at making debit acceptance more competitive. The law, known as Regulation II or the Durbin Amendment, locked in merchants’ right to choose between two unaffiliated networks in the routing of a PIN debit transaction.
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What's up in Washington
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Josh Pynn The 118th Congress Convenes and Regulatory Activity Kicks Off the New Year
Mar 30, 2023With such an exciting 2022 for payments policy, it is important to look ahead at what 2023 will bring. In 2023, we will see the enforcement date of the Federal Reserve Board’s (Fed) Regulation II Debit Routing Clarification come into effect on July 1, renewed efforts on the Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA), and regulatory agencies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will remain hard at work. Below is an update as to what is going on in DC.
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Education
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Leah Collins Leverage MAG Resources to Expand Your Growth in the Payments Ecosystem
Mar 29, 2023There are many ways to utilize the MAG’s member benefits and available resources to help move your business forward.
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Payments Technology
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Steve Cole A Closer Look at ISO 20022
Mar 22, 2023For most of the last 40 years, the payments industry has primarily relied on the ISO 8583 standard for processing payment transactions. More recently another standard, ISO 20022, has begun making appearances in certain payment applications in the U.S. ISO 20022 is a global standard for exchanging electronic financial messages of all sorts. While it may seem to many that 20022 is a new standard, it has actually been around for almost two decades being first published by ISO in 2004 and has been adopted in a number of countries around the globe.
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Conference Update
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Andrea Rouse MAG Mid-Year Conference and Tech Forum was THE Place to Be
Mar 8, 2023MAG’s conferences continue to grow! With nearly 900 merchants and sponsors in attendance, we once again surpassed previous in-person attendance numbers for our Mid-Year Conference & Tech Forum. The amount of active networking throughout the event created a palpable buzz - supporting the fact that MAG Conferences are the ‘can’t-miss-event’ in the payments industry.
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International Perspective
Dhun Karai The True Cost of Buy Now Pay Later
Feb 13, 2023The Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) industry appears to be on the brink of a shake-up. On the surface, the deal is simple: consumers have a way to split their purchase into multiple payments over time, and merchants pay service fees to the providers. In theory, the flexibility should drive additional sales to retailers, but is this model the best idea for both consumers and retailers? In this article, Grant Thornton Australia’s Merchant Payments Advisory lead, Partner Dhun Karai, outlines the current BNPL challenges and what the proposed tightening of regulations and increasing consumer discontent might translate to for merchants. She encourages merchants to speak up about their wishes for the future of BNPL products to protect both shoppers and merchants from escalating costs and increase the attractiveness for both sides of the retail industry.
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Board Chair Update
Kathy Hanna Payments…“Life in the Fast Lane”
Dec 20, 2022As we approach the end of another year, the speed of change in the payments industry is not slowing down. Many areas of change are accelerating to address issues in the continuing growth of digital payments.
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MAG MEMBER HIGHLIGHT
From Student to Teacher in Payments
MAG SPONSOR HIGHLIGHT
Oliver Wyman — The CFPB and BNPL: Perspectives on New Report
MAG INSIGHTS
View past newsletter articlesMEET OUR NEW MEMBERS
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MEET OUR NEW SPONSORS
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Affirm’s mission is to deliver honest financial products that improve lives. By building a new kind of payment network — one based on trust, transparency and putting people first — we empower millions of consumers to spend and save responsibly, and give thousands of businesses the tools to fuel growth. Unlike credit cards and other pay-over-time options, we show consumers exactly what they will pay up front, never increase that amount, and never charge any late or hidden fees.
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The Clearing House operates U.S-based payments networks that clear and settle more than $2 trillion each day through wire, ACH, check image, and real-time payments. It is the nation’s most experienced payments company, with a long track record of providing secure and reliable systems, payments innovation, and strategic thought leadership to financial institutions. In 2017, The Clearing House revolutionized U.S. payments by introducing the RTP® network, which supports the immediate clearing and settlement of payments, along with the ability to exchange related payment information across the same secure channel. These RTP capabilities enable all financial institutions to offer safer, faster, and smarter digital transaction services for their corporate and retail customers. Learn more at www.theclearinghouse.org.
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Mica is a credential-less payment network that delivers secure, flexible and efficient transaction infrastructure.
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Identiq is a private network for identity validation that empowers companies to safely collaborate with each other in order to validate trusted customers–without sharing any sensitive data or identifiable information. Our peer-to-peer technology helps some of the world's largest companies to identify good customers, fight fraud, and offer better experiences throughout the digital journey.