WASHINGTON – Yesterday, the Merchants Payments Coalition (MPC), of which NACS is a founding member, hosted a briefing on mobile payments for members of Congress and staff. The briefing, which provided a general overview of the mobile payments environment and future trends, was moderated by NACS Counsel Doug Kantor of Steptoe & Johnson LLP, and featured a panel of three experts: Kenneth Douglas, senior vice president at payments company SEQR; Kate Jaspon, vice president and corporate controller and treasurer of Dunkin’ Brands Inc.; and Gideon Samid, chief technology officer of the digital-money company BitMint LLC and a professor at the University of Maryland. 

During the briefing, the panelists discussed the latest mobile payments technologies as well as mobile payments security and lessons learned from mobile payments technologies already deployed abroad.  Significantly, SEQR’s Douglas explained that true innovation in mobile payments is not about “digitizing the existing payment card system,” it is about creating new payment technologies that appeal to consumers and cut the retail costs associated with payment acceptance.

All of the panelists urged the policymakers in attendance to legislate in a technology-neutral way to avoid stifling innovation — and University of Maryland’s Professor Samid noted that the buzz surrounding EMV chip technology is misplaced, since it is approximately 15 years old, which is ancient in technology terms. The panelists all saw mobile technologies as moving quickly and holding promise for positive change in the payments space, but they cautioned that the dominant card-based networks (Visa and MasterCard) could try to squelch competition before it gets off the ground. Such action would hurt consumers, merchants and the economy as a whole, because true innovation may dramatically cut costs and make payments more cost-efficient and convenient.

NACS is a founding member of the MPC, a group of more than 100 retail trade associations that advocates for increased competition and transparency in the payment card system.