Once again, this week’s news cycle in the world of credit and finance gives us a fascinating glimpse into how varied the metrics are of credit card reporting, to the degree that two different studies can came out at the same time, each claiming different conclusions about how women use credit cards.
Year: 2017
On the Road: Best Cards For the Season Ahead
Memorial Day beckons as the official kick-off to the summer travel season, but your AVPS blog correspondents already have one child flying back from college for the break, and we’ve booked an interestingly complicated itinerary for a summer flight of our own. So travel season, it appears, is here.
In the News: Card Use Encouraged; Card Use Cut Back
It’s that time of year where we start to monitor the trends over consumer card use — particularly with summer travel season looming. But two other initial trends this spring caught our eye first, and may shed some light on where your customers are at.
Your Credit Card Could Start Literally “Leaking” Data in the Smartphone Era
By way of a heads-up comes this news from Canada, and reported in the northerly edition of Huffington Post (and later picked up in Forbes’ credit card “round up” column). We’ve mentioned those embedded chips that are due to replace magnetic strips on most credit cards (and have to a large extent in Europe — where the upgraded plastic is the “EMV” standard we’ve written about here before).
Follow-up: Senate Getting Ready to Hit “Send” on Online Sales Tax
Part of reporting financial, economic and practical news that helps your business, and illuminates the climate your business operates in, is to make sure we follow up on the “developing” trends and stories posted here. We wrote recently of the proposed online sales tax in Congress, where it seems after years of refusing to allow states to carry out such taxation in the “early days” of online commerce, it appears that the confluence of online retail being robust, mostly thriving, and clearly here-to-stay, along with the chronic budget woes of states, have combined to make a green light for such taxes likelier than ever before.
More Credit Fraud — But More Potential Security, too
The news in credit cards this week is kind of yin/yang, straddling both sides of the security fence. On the one hand, there’s news of another breach, this one affecting the St. Louis- based Schnucks Market chain, which confirmed an April 15 “hack” affecting 2.4 million credit and debit cards, used at nearly 80% of its 100 stores. Track 2 card numbers and expiration data were were breached in specific stores, and depending where your customers are based, they may not be affected at all.
Madera, m’dear? Not If You’re Not Careful About Card Fraud!
While credit card fraud thankfully remains the rule, rather than the exception, we like to post occasional news items here about card fraud schemes, for their instructive value. In other words, what they can they teach our merchants about making their own transactions safer?
….And Yet, M-Commerce — and M-Everything — Is Still On the Rise!
The headline is a direct follow up to last week’s blog post, which concerned one merchant’s unfortunate overreaction to “showrooming,” that mobile-device enabled method of seeing a product “live” in a store, then turning to a handy screen to see if you can get it for a better price.
What Not To Do In Response to “M-Commerce”
Sometimes this happens with the newfangled habit of “showrooming.” We’ve written about it here before, and as a merchant with customers, you should keep the phrase on your radar. “Showrooming” refers to the practice of customers entering a store, looking at items “live,” as it were (which is to say, displayed on your shelves — if you’re one of those with an offline location that has shelves), then checking their phones quickly to see if they can get it for a better price — once your own showroom display has actually helped make the sale.
