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.
Category: AVP Solutions Merchant Info
….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.
Navigating New Sales Tax Trends with AVP Solutions
As part of our ongoing efforts to keep you updated on how saying the phrase “just charge it!” is changing for your very customers, we wanted to alert you to the Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013. It specifies that states need to simplify their own tax systems, so they can collect sales tax from out-of-state merchants, who are selling to their citizens online.
Valentine’s Day Spending Hits New Highs in 2024
A new survey by the National Retail Federation says that American’s will spend more than $18 billion on Valentine’s Day, making it one of our “spendiest” holidays, close on the heels of Christmas and Halloween. According to the NRF, the average outlay will be around $130 a person — a $5 uptick from last year, though the “average” for men actually clocks in at around $176, while for women it hovers around $90.
Massive Consumer Spending Event Headed Your Way!
The National Retail Federation is out with their annual survey to estimate the breadth and depth of consumer spending for the unofficial American holiday known as “Super Bowl Sunday.” As an article in the San Diego Source noted, this Sunday’s “big football game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens is more than a sporting event — it is a massive consumer event.
How Will Credit Card Fee Changes Affect Consumer Credit Card Use?
Or will they? As a follow-up to last week’s post about the late-in-the-year settlement on card fees, and how those might affect both merchants and consumers, comes this additional item in the Washington Post.
New Year’s Changes: Merchant surcharges
Happy 2013 to our readers, and while this first January week may still find many of us in lingering “holiday mode,” it actually brings some “hard news” in the credit card processing business.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday Span Increasingly “Mobile” Weekend
The trendlines — not to be confused with the weekend’s expanding waistlines! — are in, and changing shopping patterns, and evidence of a slowly recovering economy, were both apparent over the long holiday weekend.
“Smart cards” headed this way — eventually
According to the Nilson Report, one of the payment industry’s leading newsletters, the United States generated about 27 percent of payment-card purchases though accounts for nearly half of global payment-card fraud.
