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                          The ETA's Transact: a must for

                        serious payment professionals




                                                                On top of this, an ongoing trend towards consolidation
                                                                of merchant processors exists, as evidenced by the recent
                                                                acquisition of Jetpay by NCR and Cayan by TSYS, and the
                                                                recently announced merger of TSYS and Global Payments.
                                                                We can expect further mergers acquisitions this year,
                                                                which makes it exciting for the ETA member companies.
                                                                Varied educational tracks

                                                                One reason to attend Transact each year is the profusion of
                                                                educational tracks. Here are some examples:
                                                                  •  The Risk, Fraud, and Security Track covered next-
        By Brandes Elitch                                            generation underwriting, chargeback management,
        CrossCheck Inc.                                              risks in e-commerce, compliance and security
                                                                     challenges, downside legal risks associated with
                 urely everyone who reads  The Green Sheet           boarding and maintaining merchants, identity
                 knows  of the  existence  and  importance  of the   verification, machine learning, and artificial
                 Electronic Transactions Association. If not, you    intelligence.
        S should. The ETA was founded in 1996 to pro-             •  The 22nd Century Payments Track covered mobile
        vide a foundation and forum for people who work in the       payments,   Payment   Card   Industry   security
        bankcard acquiring industry. Aside from regional associa-    standards, blockchain, faster payments, digital
        tions (such as the Midwest Acquirers, Northeast Acquirers    smart-data solutions, and mergers and acquisitions,
        ,Southeastern Acquirers and Western States Acquirers ) it    a very hot topic.
        is the primary voice for its members.                     •  The Integrated Payments Track covered surcharging
                                                                     and  cash discounting,  open source innovation,
        The ETA has over 5,000 members from 30 countries. The        working with independent software vendors,
        annual  conference,  Transact,  is  typically  held  in  April   outsourcing,  and  other  business-to-business
        at  the  Mandalay  Bay  Resort  and  Casino  in  Las  Vegas.   solutions.
        This year, more than 4,000 attendees and 200 exhibitors
        attended the tradeshow. As Ed Sullivan might have said, it   •  The Payment Facilitator Track covered the important
        was a "really big show!"                                     things to know if you want to be a payment
                                                                     facilitator (payfac), including card network rules
        Spreading the acquiring action                               and regulations, legal and regulatory actions, the
                                                                     business risk aspect, and global commerce.
        The U.S. payments business will collect approximately $90
        billion in fees this year, according to Bloomberg, and a large   •  The SMB Summit addressed how to provide
        part of that is the fees merchants pay for their banking and   meaningful consulting to small to midsize businesses
        credit card processing. Yes, most merchants typically use    (SMBs), how they will be affected by digital payments,
        their local credit line bank for their concentration account   and how to find and provide additional value-added
        and for cash management services. However, they are          services.
        most likely to use a merchant processor or ISO, not the   •  ETA Law School covered subjects such as maintaining
        local bank, for their credit card processing.                reserves, Federal Trade Commission oversight, class
                                                                     action developments, surcharging laws, and issues
        This is not to say that banks don't want to get into this    around how to classify and underwrite new accounts.
        space, but most of the 4,600 commercial banks in the
        United States are local banks without this capability.   Hot topics in 2019
        This is probably why two of the three major bank core
        processors, Fiserv and FIS, have recently bought merchant   People asked me what the hot topics were this year, and I
        processing companies. They see this as a way to integrate   would suggest there were two: calling on SMBs, and being
        merchant processing with their core processing, basically   a payfac. Until fairly recently, really the advent of Square
        providing the entire general ledger accounts system for   and  Amazon, if you were a merchant, you had to  have
        the client bank, so now even community banks can be     your own merchant account. If your volume was too small
        acquirers.                                              to justify this, you could not just "borrow" someone else's

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