By Dale S. Laszig
Days away from The Green Sheet's 40th anniversary, I'm reminded of the payments industry's push to go paperless around 20 years ago. Merchant acquirers were digitizing their offices in earnest, scanning paper files and rolling metal file cabinets on wooden dollies to nearby loading docks where they were hauled away. It was the end of paper as we knew it.
Payment professionals followed suit, ending the practice of printing out emails and banishing their pitch books to the dustbins of history. By contrast, it took years for merchants to end their dependence on paper receipts. Some stores and gas stations have only recently begun to offer email and digital receipt alternatives to customers.
As a payment professional, I watched the paperless procession from a ringside seat, amazed at how quickly innovative solutions were becoming obsolete. It occurred to me that most payment technology had the equivalent lifespan of a daily newspaper, which inspired, "Dial is yesterday's paper," my op-ed published July 28, 2008, in Issue 08:07:02 of The Green Sheet.
"Twenty years ago, we had a large population of merchants who depended on paper for their bankcard transactions," I wrote. "Today we have an equally large population of merchants who are using outmoded dial technology."
Comparing dial modems to paper receipts, the article identified a huge opportunity to upgrade dial terminal estates, noting that a four-second transaction would seem like warp speed to any merchant accustomed to 45-second dial transactions. Advanced communications are revolutionizing our space, I added, providing faster, smarter, more efficient transactions.
As more merchants and service providers deployed cellular, Internet protocol (IP)-enabled, Wireless IP-enabled (Wi-Fi), and contactless protocols, connected POS became more affordable and easier to use, I noted. And today, 15 years later, traditional credit card terminals are still around but share an increasingly crowded market with key fobs, smartphones, laptop computers, integrated systems, embedded commerce and the Internet of Things.
"We've come a long way in the last two decades," I wrote. "Once limited to dial modems, we now provide an array of secure high-speed protocols to merchants. These solutions are more efficient than dial, and they offer substantial savings and return on investment."
As The Green Sheet reported Sept. 6, 2023, in "Out with plastic, in with paper gift cards," the payments industry is evaluating paper-based payment card products as a path to sustainability, most recently with Blackhawk Network (BHN) and Visa's environmental initiative aimed at transitioning open-loop prepaid cards from plastic to sustainable paper-based materials.
With a fall rollout planned in the United States, Canada and Australia, the program will potentially transform 350 million open-loop and multi-branded products produced by BHN and approximately 700 million cards produced by third-party providers, the companies stated, adding that these measures will benefit merchants, issuers, brands and consumers.
Talbott Roche, CEO and president of BHN, positioned the project as part of a companywide effort to lead prepaid and gift card providers to responsibly sourced materials.
"As a go-to partner for the largest brands in the world, we understand the importance of thoughtfully managing our role in the industry's supply chain, and it's our responsibility to reduce the environmental impact of the products we produce and distribute across the world. We hope more industry stakeholders join us in our ongoing efforts," she said. "Collaborating with influential brands like Visa is helping us create a more sustainable payment card market."
Douglas Sabo, chief sustainability officer at Visa, affirmed that Visa has long supported sustainable and responsible business.
"In addition to our own ongoing initiatives, joining BHN in its sustainability efforts is a way we can join forces for a greater collective good," he said. "We recognize that together with our partners we can achieve our goal of being an engine of sustainable commerce—including through sustainable payment cards."
While newspapers hitting front porches were once an American staple, The Green Sheet and payments are still going strong, sharing news and exchanging value, respectively. It's only our delivery methods that keep on changing. 
Dale S. Laszig, senior staff writer at The Green Sheet and founder and CEO at DSL Direct LLC, is a payments industry journalist and content strategist. Connect via email dale@dsldirectllc.com, LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/dalelaszig/ and Twitter https://twitter.com/DSLdirect
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