In Pizza Hut Asian Restaurants, A MasterCard Robot Takes Orders And Payments-With An Attitude

An interesting MasterCard experiment is going on now at some Pizza Hut restaurants in Asia, where life-size robots take orders and process payments, with the intent of letting more store associates perform more involved customer tasks. (If you'll recall, that was the same argument made for early self-checkout systems.) But what makes this effort different is that these robots are designed to sense emotions and to react accordingly.

Beyond the obvious questions-such as "Is the world ready for empathetic creatures trying to sell you stuffed crust toasted s'mores cookie pizzas?"-there are the implications of emotion-detecting robots named Pepper. ("The name Pepper was chosen because it is a word that is easy to say and understand across many languages and cultures," MasterCard said.) In this deployment, they are named Pepper. The company making these robots, SoftBank Robotics, has created a series of videos depicting their potential. The main video (in Japanese) is worth watching, but be prepared for some serious weirding-out, if my teen daughter will permit me to use that phrase.

EMV Really Screwing Up Apple Pay

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when EMV data we receive. As more major retail chains fully accept EMV payments, Apple Pay is being dealt some serious experience setbacks, such as being asked twice for price verification and being asked for fingerprint biometric authentication and then, a few screens later, a signature. Neither of those steps were part of the Apple Pay process until merchants switched on EMV.

To be clear, those time-wasting moves are not part of the Apple Pay process at all, but are superimposed after the Apple Pay transaction is complete and customers think they are done. The reason this is now happening is due to very strict interpretations of EMV rules-and the fact that the nature of the payment mechanism (beyond that it's contactless) is not always communicated to the POS. Hence, it must assume the worst. When two retailers-Trader's Joe's and Whole Foods--last week made the switch through upgraded Verifone POS terminals, customers used to speedy Apple Pay experiences were literally being called back to the checkout lane to complete the additional keystrokes. Before, once Apple Pay's screen said "done" and displayed an animated checkmark, they were free to leave. Not so in an EMV world.

PBS Special On 3D Printing – Will 3D Printing Change The World?

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With A New Mission, Walmart Pay Goes Live In Arkansas, Texas

Now that Walmart no longer has to pretend to be support CurrentC-thanks to its effective demise, courtesy of MCX's concession to reality-the largest retail chain announced Monday (May 16) that it had rolled out Walmart Pay across 110 Walmart stores in Arkansas and 480 Walmart stores in Texas. Walmart Pay the concept was announced by the merchant back in December. Walmart Pay has been rolled out in a way very different than Walmart wanted to do a mobile payment, but it's a model that has been obviously shaped by Apple Pay.

Like Apple Pay, it supports "any major credit, debit, pre-paid or Walmart gift card." But unlike Apple Pay, it works across iOS and Android devices. And unlike Apple Pay and every other NFC payment method, it can work on a far wider range of phones-especially older phones-that do not support NFC. All the phone needs is the ability to download an app and enough of a camera to scan a QR code. But Walmart Pay suffers a major weakness that Apple Pay doesn't. As long as the shopper is willing to use the default card in Apple Pay, all that the shopper need do is hold the phone right above the card reader. It doesn't need to be connected to any network, nor does the shopper have to launch an app, key in a password or manipulate the app in any way. Contrast that with Walmart Pay, which requires the shopper to find and then open the Walmart app, select Walmart Pay and then manually activate the camera and then scan a register QR code-which as many shoppers will confirm, isn't always that easy to do on the first or second attempt.

Chase Makes The Right Security Move After Swift Breaches

A report Tuesday (May 17) that J.P. Morgan Chase "has limited some employees' access to the Swift global interbank messaging service amid questions about security breaches at a pair of Asian banks that used the funds-transfer platform" raises some concerns, but it appears to be just enforcing a stricter "need to know" and "need to access" approach from Chase.

Although there have been other reports raising the possibility of an earlier Swift attack-with a major Bangladesh bank-being an insider job, it could just as easily be an attack where the bank employees were victimized. Employees might have had their credentials stolen via keystroke-capturing malware or being tricked into visiting a credential-stealing site designed to look like Swift's access area.

MCX Concedes The Obvious: CurrentC Is Dead. Indeed, It Was Never Really Alive

When MCX on Monday (May 16) issued a statement that "MCX will postpone a nationwide rollout of its CurrentC application," it was akin to U.S. presidential candidates who suspend their campaigns. It's a polite way of saying "it's over" without having to say those words outloud.

But for many reasons, CurrentC never had much of a chance, having been created in the most merchant-centric (OK, I'll admit it: Walmart-centric) manner possible. It's creation was to give retailers a way to sharply cut back interchange fees and it was being pushed by a merchant who was already paying among the very lowest interchange fee percentages of anyone.

Benefits of Medicinal Plants and Herbs in Traditional Chinese Medicine

The ABCs of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture

Traditional Chinese medicine is one of the oldest continuous systems of medicine in history, with recorded instances dating as far back as two thousand years before the birth of Christ.

Chinese medicine is quite complex and can be difficult for some people to comprehend. This is because TCM is based, at least in part, on the Daoist belief that we live in a universe in which everything is interconnected. What happens to one part of the body affects every other part of the body. The mind and body are not viewed separately, but as part of an energetic system.

 

Science Affirms Benefits of Chinese Herbs - But Not in the Way You'd Think

In TCM, medicinal plants and herbs are harvested, dried, and prepared according to traditional Chinese pharmacopeia methods, and either taken in small doses over time as preventive measures or consumed daily in the case of chronic illnesses. Many plants and herbs such as Ganoderma Lucidum, or lingzhi mushroom, are also incorporated into everyday cooking.

 

What Are The Benefits of Herbal Medicine?

Herbal medicine can be very useful for treating many different illnesses from minor scrapes and burns to serious diseases. Herbal medicines are mostly used for persistent illnesses such as migraines, arthritis, depression and PMS.

 

10 Benefits Of Traditional Chinese Medicine

The top benefit that comes from traditional Chinese medicine is that the medicine is all natural. Although the herbs that are used in the medicine may have some side effects, it is nothing compared to the side effects from modern medicine.

 

The Hub of Herbal Medicine in Hong Kong (China)

You can find many different types of Chinese remedies in this store. Various remedies are important ingredients for foods that improve your health. For example, this is swallow's nest, which purifies and strengthens the body's systems, and provide resistance to disease and premature aging.

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Wendy's Admits Almost 350 Stores Hit In POS Attack

On Wednesday (May 11), Wendy's said that "fewer than 300 of approximately 5,500 franchised North America Wendy's restaurants" had malware in their POS systems and another "approximately 50 franchise restaurants are suspected of experiencing, or have been found to have, unrelated cybersecurity issues." This comes on the heels of a lawsuit that accused Wendy's of a wide range of IT security shortcomings.

In the new statement, Wendy's did not identify which POS was impacted, but it strongly implied that new Aloha POS systems-currently being installed throughout the company, with the stated goal of full deployment by "year-end 2016"-were not infected. Wendy's "has worked aggressively with its investigator to identify the source of the malware and quantify the extent of the malicious cyber-attacks, and has disabled and eradicated the malware in affected restaurants. The Company continues to work through a defined process with the payment card brands, its investigator and federal law enforcement authorities to complete the investigation," Wendy's said.

In Australia, Apple Pay Boosts Credit Card, Deposit Account Applications

In Australia, the ANZ Banking Group found something strange happen after it started accepting Apple Pay. It experienced "a surge in applications for credit cards and deposit accounts" to such a degree that it "has forced the other major banks to re-enter negotiations" with Apple, according to a report in The Sydney Morning Herald. In other words, Australian shoppers found the idea of the NFC payment method so significant that they wanted to engage in non-Apple Pay-related banking functions.

"ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott said at the bank's interim results last week that online credit card applications were up 20 per cent since the deal with Apple was announced on April 28," the story noted, adding that the figures "were the highest on record" and "more than double the average." Elliott was quoted as saying "that the higher level is continuing." This is consistent with much of what we've said about Apple Pay, that this huge a behavioral change needs to be a psychological shift. This will need to be a right-brain move-focused on emotions, intuition and imagination-rather than a left-brain (logic, analysis, linear) move. Bankers and payment professionals are notoriously left-brain people, while Apple is the quintessential right-brain company.

PCI Just Gave A Huge Gift To PFs

Merchants of all sizes love to hate PCI. In a perverse sense then, PCI can be a payment facilitator's best friend. The more complicated, difficult and agonizing PCI guidelines become, the more merchants-especially smaller ones-will find tremendous value in pawning off the PCI duties to someone else, especially someone else-such as a PF-that knows PCI and other compliance rules intimately.

It's for that reason that what the PCI Security Standards Council did last week is so important. Not only are they making the rules more demanding and complicated-a necessary move to boost the rules' security-but they are now applying the rules far more broadly, implicating executives who had never before had to directly deal with PCI. Put into corporate terms, it's one thing to infuriate a bunch of CIOs and CISOs, but it's quite a different thing to infuriate their CFO, COO and CEO bosses as well as their bosses, namely board members. And yet that's exactly what the council is doing.

PayPal's New Fraud Rules Are Key For PFs

PayPal announced Wednesday (May 4) a series of payments policy changes, including late-to-the-game restrictions on gift cards, a longtime favorite cyberthief tool. Given PayPal's massive marketshare, payment facilitators need to watch closely any policy changes the no-longer-Ebay-unit makes. In short, any fraud-related changes that PayPal makes gives political cover for any PF to mimic the move.

The biggest change is that PayPal is now excluding "items equivalent to cash, including gift cards" from its PayPal Seller Protection program. It made a similar change to its Purchase Protection program by "clarifying the exclusion for items equivalent to cash to now include stored value items such as gift cards and pre-paid cards." A few other items that will no longer be supported by purchase protection-at least as of June 25, when the new rules are scheduled to kick in-are payments on crowdfunding platforms, "gambling, gaming and/or any other activity with an entry fee and a prize" and "anything purchased from or an amount paid to a government agency."