Lusis Payments | Innovative Global Payments Software and Services
FR (+33) 1 55 33 09 00  -  USA ​(+1) 415 829 4577 - CA ​(+1) 416 979 7800 - UK (+44) 20 3398 5582
  • Home
  • TANGO
  • AI FRAUD
  • LITEPOS
  • SOLUTIONS
    • TANGO VIDEOS
    • LITERATURE
  • BENCHMARKS
    • USER PROFILES
  • ABOUT
    • PARTNERS >
      • HPE GreenLake
    • VIDEO
    • EVENTS
    • PRIVACY
  • WEBCAST
  • Contact
    • CAREERS >
      • JOBS-UK
      • JOBS-FRANCE
      • JOBS-NA
      • JOBS-LA
      • JOB APPLICATION
  • NEWS
    • Market Insights

Banking on the Cloud

11/22/2022

 
Picture
By Dave Smith - Consultant, Lusis Payments
 
It was John Gage of Sun Microsystems who coined the phrase, “the Network is the Computer” - way back in 1984.  Understandably, this phrase was originally more of a vision than the reality. However, the ensuing 38 years of computing development has generated incredible progress.  With the advent of Cloud computing we now live in a world where on-demand computing infrastructure can be readily purchased and deployed within any geographic region.
 
Surely we can agree that the computer industry has fully delivered Gage’s historic vision. 
 
However, putting aside the numerous technical achievements we also need to consider the functionality of the software itself.  A recent banking experience provided a sobering reality check and several points to ponder.
 
My “customer journey” started when I needed to update the registered address on my business account.  This was accomplished easily enough using the online banking facilities.  The real challenges started when I tried to change the address on the associated credit card. I had naively assumed that this could also be done online - given that both my business account and credit card were issued by the same bank.
 
After a lengthy wait in the phone queue, the support agent for the credit card team informed me that the address change for account had not updated on her system yet. Furthermore, it could take up to 3 business days to complete. Additionally, it wasn’t clear whether I would automatically receive a notification message once the credit card address was changed. What!?
 
So much for the “seamless customer journey” ideas that I hear being preached at banking conferences.      
 
Today, banks are rightly giving significant attention to their “Cloud Strategy”, whether it be in the planning stages or early implementations.  The recent acquisition of Cloud payments specialist, Renovite, by JPMC demonstrates the importance some banks are assigning their Cloud strategies. 
 
In my view, a cloud strategy should not become overly distracted by the technology itself.  The staggering levels of investment being injected by Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and others, will ensure that the Cloud will consistently become better and better.
 
The real question that banks need to ask themselves concerning their Cloud Strategy is what software investments are required to improve operational efficiencies, streamline the customers’ journeys, and increase competitive agility.
 
Simply shifting the same tired, poorly integrated ‘software blobs’ into the cloud may save a few bucks. It might even win the CIO some Brownie points.  But it will do very little to Transform their business.
 
Hopefully, it is the Transformative potential of the Cloud that will guide the banks’ strategies beyond the short term cost gains.

Contact Lusis Payments when developing your Cloud strategy for solutions that improve your organization's operational efficiencies and improve customer experiences.

Enriching the Branch Experience

10/17/2022

 
Picture
by David Smith
​
​As a long serving practitioner in the ATM Industry I have witnessed several policy decisions that really intrigued me.  For example, some banks take the stance that their in-branch automation is solely for their own customers. Others, take a more inclusive approach allowing non-bank consumers to use their facilities alongside their own clients. I have certainly experienced both sides of this question in different parts of the world.
 
As a fan of consumer-centric businesses, I favor the latter approach, although I understand the rationale of the “my customers only” principles. However, the policy thinking around “who will you serve?” becomes further convoluted when you recognize that many banks run promotions to attract new customers, offering money to new customers as a signing-up reward. Sometimes these incentive payments can reach £100 or more.
 
Surely, allowing non-bank consumers to use your branch automated services can be a powerful recruitment aid. I mean, you know exactly where they are at that point in time, what they are doing, and you have staff on hand to help and advise them appropriately.
 
Surely this is a good thing, right?
 
Once you truly embrace every consumer interaction as an opportunity to learn something new, to deepen the relationship, then you fundamentally change the possibilities for growth.
 
Traditionally, banking automation was mechanically sophisticated but depended on proprietary vendor software to work. Consequently, banks often faced substantial costs for even simple customizations, particularly if they had a mixture of hardware from different vendors. Under these circumstances it was difficult to personalize the consumer’s experience, or to differentiate yourself from your competitors in a meaningful way. An investment in vendor-independent ATM software ensures true portability across any self-service device, thereby reducing costs and creating a greater choice in hardware.
 
Happily, this restrictive situation has changed significantly with the growing market trust in vendor-independent, multi-vendor, ATM software. Additionally, the ATMIA’s new blueprint architecture clearly separates the task of terminal management from the payments switch, and embraces the versatile ISO 20022 messaging standard instead of the proprietary and more restrictive NDC protocol. These changes eliminate two of the greatest blockers to service flexibility.
 
Banks now enjoy ready access to affordable self-service technologies, freeing them to create any branch experience they want. The next leap forward in ATM channel excellence is the application of relevant, real-time consumer information in a way that benefits both the consumer and the bank. Specifically, this step involves the deployment of workflow orchestration and machine learning-based recommendation engines.
​
Picture
​Typically, the workflow management is achieved with a modern payments switch that interacts directly with the ATM client software for both the consumer information retrieval, and the transaction processing. Ideally, the recommendation engine will be integrated with the payments switch so that it can directly influence the consumer’s interactions. The recommendation engine should embrace both rules and a variety of machine learning methods to accommodate the widest possible spectrum of applied learning. Lusis Payments’ TANGO platform is a good example of an integrated workflow orchestration and recommendation engine.
So, how might a bank leverage workflow and recommendation engine technologies to improve their in-branch experience for both their own, and the non-bank, consumers?
 
Traditionally, an ATM would collect the card and PIN information before sending any information to the switch. This is all ‘dead-time’ during which the bank has no information about the consumer to act on.  In a more consumer-centric approach, the ATM sends the card information to the switch as soon as it is entered. The switch replies with relevant consumer information that can be used to personalize the services offered. In addition, advisory information can be sent to a branch agent’s device notifying them about the consumer, the machine they are using, and what should be done.
 
Furthering this illustrative scenario, the recommendation engine might determine that a non-bank consumer qualifies for an account sign-up special offer or other guest services based on the number of previous visits, the time of day, transactions performed, etc. Special offer vouchers could be dispensed via the receipt printer for redemption with a branch agent. Simple guest services could include the waiving of the acquiring fees in return for phone number information or other contact details.
 
Numerous other relationship-building options can be easily and affordably implemented with today’s technology. The biggest obstacle to the creation of consumer-centric ATM channels used to be the infrastructure but this is no longer true. A much larger obstacle, in my opinion, is the legacy mindset among senior stakeholders that rejects the ATM channel as a vehicle for innovation and richer consumer services.
 
The financial pressures causing banks to close branches on a large scale are highly unlikely to subside any time soon. This situation is further aggravated by regulatory pressures on banks to provide third party access to consumer data – thereby inviting new competition for financial services. Now, more than ever, banks need to focus more about personalizing the consumer experiences they create as a means to strengthen brand loyalty and growth.

NEW: TANGO V8.1 with Cloud-Native Support

8/25/2022

 
Picture

TANGO is the world's most performant Retail Payments solution with benchmark tests demonstrating 10,000 transactions per second. Built using a micro-services architecture, TANGO is also feature-rich and easily extensible. Backed by Lusis' proven track record it is not surprising that more and more organizations are swapping out their legacy payments infrastructure for TANGO.

TANGO is the culmination of decades of crafted engineering that ensures the maximum operational performance and reliability as well as the most affordable cost of ownership. For example, TANGO includes a Self-Monitoring and Auto-Spawning feature whereby a suite of timers can be configured to monitor the processing time for specific events. By comparing the real-time measurements against the defined norms TANGO can immediately identify bottlenecks as soon as they occur. TANGO can also be configured to automatically spawn new instances of the affected micro-service or process thereby ensuring the required throughput is maintained.

TANGO uses the Docker containerization platform and a typical deployment uses the 5-Container model shown below.

Picture
Significantly, the container boundaries are defined to simplify manageability. For example, the gateways and firewalls are combined in a
single container to simplify PCI certification tasks. Equally, the monitoring and other tools are located in a dedicated container to ease
system evolution.

This approach has numerous benefits, not least of which is that it is well proven and supports the easy and secure use of cloud infrastructure. However, in this model, container creation is still a manual process. Consequently, Lusis has expanded TANGO's container model to deliver the full elastic scalability advantages of a cloud-native environment.

TANGO Cloud-Native Support
Introducing cloud-native support to TANGO was principally achieved through the adoption of a “many-containers” model and the addition of a container orchestration component. TANGO was already a containerized application (using Docker) so this was a relatively simple step.

Given that cloud technologies are continuing to evolve, Lusis recognized the importance of providing customers with a choice of technologies. Specifically, Lusis has validated TANGO with both Kubernetes and OpenShift as the container orchestration layer. Additionally, TANGO has been certified to run on the cloud
infrastructure of Azure, Amazon, and Google.  READ MORE
Vertical Divider
payments cloud software
Download to read the rest of the document.
Submit

Is a revolution in consumer-centric payments inevitable?

6/9/2022

 
Picture
The card-based payments mechanism has evolved over many decades and is now a commonplace experience for both the consumer and merchants. Recently there has been a steady stream of new payment innovations, though none has yet to achieve the ubiquity of the traditional card.

So what near-term changes can we expect in the US market in how consumer payments are conducted?

In this paper we will be looking at potential drivers for change, specifically;
  • the implications of soaring fraud,
  • interchange fee pressures,
  • the potential evolution of the phone-based wallet, and
  • what should payments organizations do to prepare themselves to exploit emerging trends?

From a technology perspective it is reasonable to assume that the necessary ingredients and know-how currently exists to build any form of consumer payments system.  Cloud-computing, strong encryption, AI and machine learning, blockchain, crypto-currencies, and digital wallets, are all ingredients for a new era in consumer payments. However, it is not the technology that will ultimately determine the direction of consumer payments but rather who stands to benefit within the payments ecosystem.

So who might benefit from a new consumer payments method and who might lose out? 


US Card-market Snapshot
The charts below highlight just two aspects of the US payments market. Firstly chart 1 shows the staggering revenues associated with credit card purchases, while chart 2 shows the alarming rise in reported card fraud and identity theft. ​
atm software payments processing
Payments technology
The rampant fraud losses rightfully creates great concern. There is a deep, moral instinct that kicks in when the 'bad-guys' seemingly get away with criminal gains. There is certainly some great AI and machine learning technologies emerging that are creating tangible reductions in fraud levels. However, one of the great challenges of fraud detection and prevention is that fraud evolves. Card fraud is no longer the purview of chancers and petty thieves, it has become the domain of sophisticated, organized crime gangs with the capability to probe security defenses and rapidly exploit any vulnerabilities. 

The irony is that despite more and more consumers being impacted by card-related fraud the popularity and increased usage of credit cards suggests there are still significant gains to be made by the card processing networks and card issuers. With commercial factors being what they are, card processing organizations are under no obligation to eliminate fraud. Provided that the losses are sufficiently small relative to the financial gains then the quest for more growth becomes the priority.

Given the healthy profits associated with card processing and its apparent entrenchment into the commercial fabric it begs the question - “is there sufficient pressure for change?”

Consumers who are subjected to card fraud often face significant inconvenience trying to recover lost funds and restore reputations. With the current levels it is reasonable to assume that consumers are becoming increasingly open to alternate payment methods. However, consumer dissatisfaction cannot of itself introduce a new payments option. We need another trigger point.  

The question of interchange fee rates has been a long running battle between retailers, card issuers, and the networks. Retailers have long held the view that they are being gouged over interchange fees and service charges.  In 2021, the Global Payments Consulting firm GMSPI issued a comprehensive report highlighting the dramatic imbalance in commercial profits experienced by the different players in the card-payments chain.

Significantly, the report posits that banks “generate sufficient revenue” from overdraft fees and interest payments to operate without interchange fees at all. The report further noted that the various card fees contribute to extraordinarily high profits in the card industry, with card networks reporting average operating margins of 52 percent, acquirers 36 percent and issuers 23 percent. By contrast the operating margins for retailers is just 3 percent.

Fill out the form to read the full paper.
Mobile payments software
    Complete form to read entire whitepaper.
Submit

Changing the Payment Card Monopoly: What Does it Take?

4/21/2022

 
Picture
“Do you take plastic?”
 
There was a time when consumers were asking that question in Retail outlets around the world. Nowadays, the ability to pay for goods and services with a debit or credit card is so commonplace that consumers simply assume that card acceptance is available virtually everywhere.
 
It wasn’t always like this but several decades of investment has built the card payment infrastructure to its current state. However, despite the continued growth in consumer payment transactions, card payments does have its drawbacks.
 
The level of fees paid by merchants has been a long standing area of contention, often resulting to protracted legal action to enforce greater billing transparency and reductions in overall fee costs. Another area of serious concern is the dramatic increase in card and account fraud, clearly aggravated by consumer behavior changes during the pandemic. Of course, the quest for ever simpler and more secure payment options is of great interest to many consumers.
 
There has been a lot of payments innovation over the years including stored value cards, digital wallets, and bio-metric authentication. However, many of these schemes piggyback on the card infrastructure or achieve only limited levels of success. In most industries technology has been reinventing itself at accelerating rates but this is not the case with card payments. This begs the question – “Is the card itself the bottleneck to change?”
 
Putting aside the entire settlement cycle there are several key elements that a truly alternative consumer payments option needs to address. Firstly, the consumer needs to have some form of payment token and authentication method. Additionally, the alternate payment scheme needs to ensure the secure acquisition and routing of the payment to the appropriate institution for authorization.
 
The advent of smartphones and wearable computing, coupled with the growth of real time account to account payments is already proving to be an interesting possible alternative to card payments. Some adoption rate projections suggest that account-based payments could notionally obsolete card-based payments.
 
It seems that the real hurdle to obsoleting card payments is a commercial issue, not a technical one. As long as the new entrants into the consumer payments market all seek their own “magic bullet” then they are most likely to be left nibbling around the market share of the traditional card brands. The last thing consumers want is to be drip-fed an endless array of different payment options with no clear indication of convergence and interoperability. 
 
The electric car market provides a great comparison in this regard. In an age of climate change and excessive wastage it seems obvious that governments should demand all electric cars sold in their country to have the same charging connection. The cost and timescales to create an effective charging stations infrastructure is immediately reduced, and consumers would have greater confidence to switch to electric cars. I have no doubt that were the governments of a few of the major market countries to take this bold step it would be universally applauded and the card manufacturers would deliver the requisite standards in a heart beat.
 
The US market saw a strong consortium of banks cooperate in the launch of Zelle as a competitive counter to Venmo. However, the really big question is whether the banks, Fintechs, and Retailers can cooperate to deliver a single, ubiquitous consumer payments option that can move us beyond the 70 years history of plastic cards.
<<Previous

    lUSIS nEWS

    The latest company and industry news from Lusis Payments.

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    November 2022
    October 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    August 2019
    July 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    February 2018
    November 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    December 2011

    Categories

    All
    10k TPS
    2017
    2018
    2019
    2020
    2021
    2022
    2023
    4500 TPS
    AGILITY
    Apple Pay
    Article
    Artificial Intelligence
    ATM
    ATM Machines
    Atm Software
    Banking
    Bank Of America
    Base24
    BAYESIAN MODEL
    BENCHMARK
    Blockchain
    Blog
    CANADA
    Case Study
    Cash Recycling
    CIBC
    Cloud
    Cloud Strategy
    Credit Card
    Crypto
    Cyber Security
    DEMPSTER-SHAFER MODEL
    EUROPE
    Fraud
    FRAUD DETECTION
    GREENLAKE
    HP
    HPE
    HP NonStop
    INTERNATIONAL
    LATIN AMERICA
    Legacy Replacement
    Lusis Payments
    Mastercard
    Mexico Office
    Microservices
    MIGRATION
    Mobile Payments
    NEWS RELEASE
    North America
    Payments
    Payments Industry Partners
    Payments Infrastructure
    PCI
    Philippe Preval
    Pivotal Payments
    POS
    PSD2
    Retail Payments
    Security
    Tandem User Group
    TANGO
    TANGO Cloud
    TANGO V8
    TEAM
    Technical Bootcamp
    The Connection
    Toronto
    Toronto Office
    User Profile
    Venmo
    Whitepaper
    Zelle

    RSS Feed

lusis payments processing
LUSIS SOLUTIONS​ FOR
Payments Processing
Payments Hub/Switch
ATM Management
Legacy Payment Replacement
Card Management
Apple Pay
Dynamic Currency Conversion
Mobile Payments
Loyalty Card
Artificial Intelligence
​FRAUD


LUSIS LITERATURE

PRIVACY POLICY

​LUSIS EVENTS
LUSIS NEWS
- Creating Enhanced Payments Agility
- Happy New Year! 2022 Highlights
- Banking on the Cloud

- Enriching the Branch Experience
- NEW: TANGO V8.1 with Cloud-Native Support
- A Reflection on Payments Fraud - 2022 and Beyond
- Is a revolution in consumer-centric payments inevitable?
- Changing the Payment Card Monopoly: What Does it Take?
- Is Russian software trustworthy?
- A Lusis Payments Reflection on 2021 ​
- Payments Q & A with Dave Smith
- Can financial services institutions rise to the challenge of FinTech?
- Infrastructure Decision Making - Five Key Principles 

- Preparing Your Payments Infrastructure for the Next Decade: A Guide for Financial Services Institutions
- Play to Win with TANGO for Retail Payments
- TANGO: Fast-Track to Cloud Payments
- Next Generation ATM Services
- Leading ATM Processor Chooses TANGO
- A new TANGO Benchmark on NonStop





- Why Companies are choosing TANGO to replace their Legacy Systems
​
- HPE GreenLake for Financial Payment Systems in Partnership with Lusis Payments​
- Leading Global Bank relies on TANGO for superior agility & impressive cost savings
​- Bayesian and Dempster-Shafer models for combining multiple sources of evidence in a fraud detection
- HPE NonStop for Lusis TANGO
- Cover story in "The Connection" magazine
   Tango V8 – An Implementation of Micro services 

- Fighting Fraud with the Latest Technologies TANGO AIF
- Lusis Payments Announces N American Support Center
- Research Chair: AI Applied to the Detection of Payment Fraud and Trading

- Lusis named Best Electronic Payment Systems
- Article:  A SME in the Big Leagues

​- ​TANGO 10K TPS in the Cloud
- Lusis Makes Strides to Revolutionize Payments Technology
- Lusis Leverages the Power of Artificial Intelligence
​- New Security Requirements for ATM and POS Introduced by PCI-PIN V3PIN V3: TR34 - TR31
​- TANGO - Stress Test on  HPE NonStop L-Series

- A Comparison of Machine Learning Techniques for Fraud Detection
HOME   |   TANGO   |   LITEPOS   |   SOLUTIONS   |   BENCHMARKS   |   ABOUT   |   WEBCAST   |   NEWS  
© 2022 Copyright Lusis Payments  
Lusis Payments, Lusis, TANGO and LitePOS are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lusis SA. Other parties’ trademarks referenced are the property of their respective owners.
  • Home
  • TANGO
  • AI FRAUD
  • LITEPOS
  • SOLUTIONS
    • TANGO VIDEOS
    • LITERATURE
  • BENCHMARKS
    • USER PROFILES
  • ABOUT
    • PARTNERS >
      • HPE GreenLake
    • VIDEO
    • EVENTS
    • PRIVACY
  • WEBCAST
  • Contact
    • CAREERS >
      • JOBS-UK
      • JOBS-FRANCE
      • JOBS-NA
      • JOBS-LA
      • JOB APPLICATION
  • NEWS
    • Market Insights
Proudly powered by Weebly