Mike Love is a recognized industry expert in the Electronic Payments industry.

Mike's career focus has been in eCommerce, mCommerce, electronic payment systems, related technologies and business processes.

Mike, along with selected colleagues from key disciplines in the industry representing various geographic markets around the world, have created a collaboration community called "The Paytriot Network".

The network was formed to help clients deploy the right people with the requisite technical and business experience necessary to insure mission critical projects are completed on time and within budget.

If you are facing a project challenge or have the right skills to help one of our clients, please contact us to discuss.

The Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) defines a group of businesses called Money Services Businesses or MSBs that deal with activities such as Check Cashing, Money Orders, Money Transfers, Travelers Checks, Currency Exchange or Stored Value. Businesses involved fully or partially in these activities are required by law to register. To review the registration forms and requirements, please click here

For more information or to visit the official MSB website, please click here

Additionally, if you are a Payday Loans business, please click here to review Community Financial Services Association of America (CFSA) guidelines.

MasterCard interchange rates are established by MasterCard, and are generally paid by acquirers to card issuers on purchase transactions conducted on MasterCard® cards. Interchange rates are only one of many cost components included in a MDR, and are a necessary and efficient method by which MasterCard maintains a strong and vibrant payments network. MasterCard strives to maximize the value of the MasterCard system, including the dollar volume spent on MasterCard cards, the number and types of MasterCard cards in circulation, and the number and types of merchants accepting MasterCard cards, by setting default interchange rates at levels that balance the benefits and costs to both cardholders and merchants.

Click here to view interchange fees

Visa uses interchange reimbursement fees as transfer fees between financial institutions to balance and grow the payment system for the benefit of all participants. Merchants do not pay interchange reimbursement fees; merchants pay "merchant discount" to their financial institution. This is an important distinction, because merchants buy a variety of processing services from financial institutions; all of these services may be included in their merchant discount rate, which is typically a percentage rate per transaction.

Click here to view interchange fees

Edgar, Dunn & Co. recently developed a whitepaper in cooperation with Sybase 365 entitled ‘Realizing the Full Potential of Mobile Commerce’. According to EDC, "stakeholders in the mobile commerce ecosystem will need to collaborate in order to bring flexibility to the consumer – the cornerstone needed for the success of mobile commerce. This will ultimately require orchestration to bring the stakeholders together and also manage the complexity of the mobile commerce ecosystem." Click on related links below to download the full study.

Cybersource recently completed their 10th annual survey of online fraud trends, merchant practices and benchmarks covering 2008.

The following is a summary of the key points:

• Fraud losses reached $4 Billion in 2008
• Online merchants incur 1.4% avg of revenue in fraud losses
• Online merchants rejects 3.0% avg of orders due to fraud concerns
• International losses and rejects are 3.5 times domestic
• Chargebacks account for 50% of fraud losses
• Credit for fraudulent transactions accounts for 50% of fraud losses
• 25% of orders are manually reviewed to check for fraud

Merchants are using the following techniques to check for fraud:

April 30, 2009. Visa Inc. announced today with its second fiscal quarterly results that U.S. debit-payment volume exceeded credit card payments for the first time in the company's history, as the economy continues to drive more consumers to use debit cards for everyday purchases. Click related links below to view full article