Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
With the recent stories of hacks and credit number thefts, the credit card companies are planning to reissue new credit cards with new security features. Some will be out before the holidays.
It is interesting that this happens the week that Apple introduced Apple Pay. Coincidence?
I continue to like FIS (http://www.fisglobal.com/products-card-chipcardemv, http://www.fisglobal.com/products-card-cardinstantissuance), MA, V (who raised the div 20% yesterday), AXP. Apple is also interesting - Apple Pay is not going to move the needle for Apple, but with 30 or however many million iPhone 6's they've sold so far (and more to come as we get towards Christmas) and Apple taking a % of every sale, that's a nice little income stream for the company.
Verifone seems to have been the one to replace the terminals at the Whole Foods locations I've seen and I'm guessing they've seen a fair amount of business with retailers upgrading terminals. I like Ingenico better (don't own either), but both are probably seeing good business and dominate the POS terminal industry.
Lastly, I think there is a push in general for countries to move towards digital transactions and away from physical cash.
The US seems like the last major country to switch to EMV cards and now there is a rush to do so after recent incidents. Soon enough, Visa's TIP (technology innovation program) program will push for changes:
"Establish a counterfeit fraud liability shift. Visa intends to institute a US liability shift for domestic and cross-border counterfeit card-present point-of-sale transactions, effective 1 October 2015. Currently, says Visa, POS counterfeit fraud is largely absorbed by card issuers. With the liability shift, if a contact chip card is presented to a merchant that has not adopted, at minimum, contact chip terminals, liability for counterfeit fraud may shift to the merchant’s acquirer. “The liability shift encourages chip adoption since any chip-on-chip transaction (chip card read by a chip terminal) provides the dynamic authentication data that helps to better protect all parties,” Visa explains. “The US is the only country in the world that has not committed to either a domestic or cross-border liability shift associated with chip payments.” Fuel-selling merchants will have an additional two years before a liability shift takes effect for transactions generated from automated fuel dispensers."
“The adoption of dual-interface chip technology will help prepare the US payment infrastructure for the arrival of NFC-based mobile payments by building the necessary infrastructure to accept and process chip transactions that support either a signature or PIN at the point of sale,” says Visa.
“By encouraging investments in EMV contact and contactless chip technology, we will speed up the adoption of mobile payments as well as improve international interoperability and security,” explains Jim McCarthy, global head of product for Visa."
Its the John & Scott Off-Topic show best suited for twitter, facebook, or other social forums ,not a mutual fund discussion board. No offense gentlemen, but I call them as I see them. Do you realize that 95% of your posts have nothing to do with mutual funds. Regards, Ted
Its the John & Scott Off-Topic show best suited for twitter, facebook, or other social forums ,not a mutual fund discussion board. No offense gentlemen, but I call them as I see them. Do you realize that 95% of your posts have nothing to do with mutual funds. Regards, Ted
Fair point, however,
Alternate hypothesis:
Having informative off-topic posts in an off-topic category has potential to increase readership and potential donors to MFO, and/or purchases from amazon via MFO.
But David already pointed this out before.
The problem you may be thinking of - is that all discussions in the Fund discussion category, do not always relate to Mutual Funds. e.g. look at the last 10 topics in the Fund discussions category (how many are discussions relating to Mutual funds or have any link even mentioning a Mutual fund). Granted many are about investing, but not all about Funds.
Alternatively, a person can selectively just pick Fund discussions category to read discussions about Mutual funds, providing the Funds Discussions Category topics consist of Mutual Fund discussions.
Obviously these discussions have readership by forum members, other wise they would have a very low view count.
@Accipiter: I'm sure you are aware that I was against Off-Topic when MFO first came on the web as well as the old FundAlarm days. Yes, an occasioinal Off-Topic post is fine but when every day news headline events such as Ebola, credit card fraud, car recommendatioin, etc., become prevalent its time to consider the purpose of having a Mutual Fund Discussion feature on the MFO website. Regards, Ted
"Its the John & Scott Off-Topic show best suited for twitter, facebook, or other social forums ,not a mutual fund discussion board. No offense gentlemen, but I call them as I see them. Do you realize that 95% of your posts have nothing to do with mutual funds."
Off topic means exactly that. The threads I post have something to do with the economy, and eventually the markets. As @scott has pointed out, certain companies will benefit from this big change so investors might see how their funds or stocks are participating.
If this site were to be restricted to mutual fund topics only, it would be a very slow forum. Many of your topics have nothing to do with funds either. I'm sure David and the rest enjoy a lively forum dedicated to investing with the accent on mutual funds and that is what they have designed. The posters here are some of the most if not the most intelligent investors around. Compare this board to M*. @Ted, I know you visit that site also. This place wins hands down. No disrespect intended, unlike your prefacing remarks.
This forum needs more participation from the investors that have signed up to do so. Right now a small group posts 99% of the comments and you @Ted post the majority with your 30 or so 4-0 link posts that populate the thread daily. You seem to be very informative on funds and investing so why not share that knowledge instead of posting incessant links?
It seems you have a personal grudge towards @scott and I. This is not the first time you have mentioned our names together. I will continue to post relevant news and topics of funds and other market related news until David tells me to cease. I hope @scott and others continue to do the same. I also hope others who hardly post will increase their participation.
Banks issuing cards with chips for the holiday season, but merchants aren't required to have readers in place for another year. A feel good (marketing) ploy?
Even after Oct 2015, chip-and-pin won't be required:
Corrections & Amplifications: The new EMV credit card system the U.S. is set to migrate to by October, 2015 will use microchip-enabled credit cards, but still allows customers to sign for their payments. Banks can choose to issue cards that require a PIN number instead of a signature, but the switch to PINs will not be required in October 2015 as reported in an earlier version of this article.
Is the Oct 2015 chip requirement another feel good ploy? (Actually, chip and signature will facilitate acceptance of credit cards outside the US, and improve security in the US, though not as much as chip-and-pin would: http://www.cardhub.com/edu/chip-and-pin-vs-chip-and-signature/ )
I've been thinking about this. Having been a victim of identity theft in the past, one thing I learnt was "credit card protection" was a scam and simply a way to gouge more money from customer to allegedly protect against something the issuing company/bank had a responsibility for. "credit monitoring service" is well, a service, if you want to pay for it, but while it alerts you it does not prevent anything.
Just like once people had to worry about computer viruses that were destructive, could wipe your computer's hard drive, or make computer unusable, and we worried about them, the game has changed. Today we worry about spyware, one that is surreptitiously working on your computer passing every keystroke you entered into god knows where and trying to use it not for destroying your computer but for screwing your life.
All these security features being introduced is fine. Problem is how safe is Apple from hackers? Every other day we learn of attacks on corporate servers stealing information of customers. Security while paying online is bunk if information is going to get stolen anyway after the fact.
@VintageFreak, Nothing is invincible so is Apple Pay the end of identity theft? I doubt it. The bad guys always seem to game the system somehow. But with that said, Apple has a state of the art security system for their servers. They do not save your card info nor your fingerprints. They use a system of tokenization in that a random cc number is used for the transaction. Your cc number is never in the open.
It's the safest system for now. As the bad guys get smarter, the good guys are smarter yet.
I thought this was kind of interesting: "Douglas: How can you ensure that banks and merchants are going to make the EMV switch? It isn't a law and not exactly a mandate.
Richey: If you look at Canada, right around the liability shift date you saw a dramatic increase in chip deployment on the issuing side. We saw it in Canada and all throughout Europe where they converted through a liability shift. And those countries currently have something like a 90 percent chip-on-chip transaction rate, meaning 90 percent of the transactions are chip cards meeting a chip terminal.
The liability shift works. Nobody wants to be the last person issuing mag-stripe cards because criminals are sophisticated enough to know which BINS--the number that identifies the bank that issued your card--don't have chip cards and they go after them. Once it gets started, you don't want to be the last man standing."
Comments
Verifone seems to have been the one to replace the terminals at the Whole Foods locations I've seen and I'm guessing they've seen a fair amount of business with retailers upgrading terminals. I like Ingenico better (don't own either), but both are probably seeing good business and dominate the POS terminal industry.
Lastly, I think there is a push in general for countries to move towards digital transactions and away from physical cash.
The US seems like the last major country to switch to EMV cards and now there is a rush to do so after recent incidents. Soon enough, Visa's TIP (technology innovation program) program will push for changes:
"Establish a counterfeit fraud liability shift. Visa intends to institute a US liability shift for domestic and cross-border counterfeit card-present point-of-sale transactions, effective 1 October 2015. Currently, says Visa, POS counterfeit fraud is largely absorbed by card issuers. With the liability shift, if a contact chip card is presented to a merchant that has not adopted, at minimum, contact chip terminals, liability for counterfeit fraud may shift to the merchant’s acquirer. “The liability shift encourages chip adoption since any chip-on-chip transaction (chip card read by a chip terminal) provides the dynamic authentication data that helps to better protect all parties,” Visa explains. “The US is the only country in the world that has not committed to either a domestic or cross-border liability shift associated with chip payments.” Fuel-selling merchants will have an additional two years before a liability shift takes effect for transactions generated from automated fuel dispensers."
“The adoption of dual-interface chip technology will help prepare the US payment infrastructure for the arrival of NFC-based mobile payments by building the necessary infrastructure to accept and process chip transactions that support either a signature or PIN at the point of sale,” says Visa.
“By encouraging investments in EMV contact and contactless chip technology, we will speed up the adoption of mobile payments as well as improve international interoperability and security,” explains Jim McCarthy, global head of product for Visa."
http://www.nfcworld.com/2011/08/09/38989/visa-moves-us-to-emv-and-nfc/
Regards,
Ted
Alternate hypothesis:
Having informative off-topic posts in an off-topic category has potential to increase readership and potential donors to MFO, and/or purchases from amazon via MFO.
But David already pointed this out before.
The problem you may be thinking of - is that all discussions in the Fund discussion category, do not always relate to Mutual Funds.
e.g. look at the last 10 topics in the Fund discussions category (how many are discussions relating to Mutual funds or have any link even mentioning a Mutual fund).
Granted many are about investing, but not all about Funds.
Alternatively, a person can selectively just pick Fund discussions category to read discussions about Mutual funds, providing the Funds Discussions Category topics consist of Mutual Fund discussions.
Obviously these discussions have readership by forum members, other wise they would have a very low view count.
Regards,
Ted
Off topic means exactly that. The threads I post have something to do with the economy, and eventually the markets. As @scott has pointed out, certain companies will benefit from this big change so investors might see how their funds or stocks are participating.
If this site were to be restricted to mutual fund topics only, it would be a very slow forum. Many of your topics have nothing to do with funds either. I'm sure David and the rest enjoy a lively forum dedicated to investing with the accent on mutual funds and that is what they have designed. The posters here are some of the most if not the most intelligent investors around. Compare this board to M*. @Ted, I know you visit that site also. This place wins hands down. No disrespect intended, unlike your prefacing remarks.
This forum needs more participation from the investors that have signed up to do so. Right now a small group posts 99% of the comments and you @Ted post the majority with your 30 or so 4-0 link posts that populate the thread daily. You seem to be very informative on funds and investing so why not share that knowledge instead of posting incessant links?
It seems you have a personal grudge towards @scott and I. This is not the first time you have mentioned our names together. I will continue to post relevant news and topics of funds and other market related news until David tells me to cease. I hope @scott and others continue to do the same. I also hope others who hardly post will increase their participation.
Right on. Just ignore him... some older men tend to lose it after 76 or so.
(1939 for me.)
Even after Oct 2015, chip-and-pin won't be required: http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2014/02/06/october-2015-the-end-of-the-swipe-and-sign-credit-card/
Is the Oct 2015 chip requirement another feel good ploy? (Actually, chip and signature will facilitate acceptance of credit cards outside the US, and improve security in the US, though not as much as chip-and-pin would: http://www.cardhub.com/edu/chip-and-pin-vs-chip-and-signature/ )
Just like once people had to worry about computer viruses that were destructive, could wipe your computer's hard drive, or make computer unusable, and we worried about them, the game has changed. Today we worry about spyware, one that is surreptitiously working on your computer passing every keystroke you entered into god knows where and trying to use it not for destroying your computer but for screwing your life.
All these security features being introduced is fine. Problem is how safe is Apple from hackers? Every other day we learn of attacks on corporate servers stealing information of customers. Security while paying online is bunk if information is going to get stolen anyway after the fact.
It's the safest system for now. As the bad guys get smarter, the good guys are smarter yet.
Richey: If you look at Canada, right around the liability shift date you saw a dramatic increase in chip deployment on the issuing side. We saw it in Canada and all throughout Europe where they converted through a liability shift. And those countries currently have something like a 90 percent chip-on-chip transaction rate, meaning 90 percent of the transactions are chip cards meeting a chip terminal.
The liability shift works. Nobody wants to be the last person issuing mag-stripe cards because criminals are sophisticated enough to know which BINS--the number that identifies the bank that issued your card--don't have chip cards and they go after them. Once it gets started, you don't want to be the last man standing."
Lengthy article on the topic:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/02/20/mastercard-visa-explain-why-your-credit-card-isnt-safer/