Safeguarding Customers and Staff with Touchless Payments (DESCRIPTION) U.S. Bank logo. Text, Touchless Payments. Susan Rue via web cam. (SPEECH) Hi, I am Susan Rue, and I'm a Technical Solutions Consultant. I work with enterprise and national customers who lately have been asking more and more for a touchless payments environment. They don't want to have to have their staff and their guests exchanging a card, touching a PIN pad, or having to touch the same devices in the process of making a payment. This is the environment we live in today, where everything needs to be mobile. It needs to be touchless. It needs to be wireless. And with all that it also needs to be frictionless, so it needs to be easy for your guests and consumers to make a payment and easy for you to implement at your point of sale. So many of the concepts around touchless, I think, are obvious. You can-- everyone is aware of contactless payments, for example. And contactless payments can be accepted in a multitude of ways. We could be talking about a contactless card. (DESCRIPTION) R.F.I.D. transmission signal on a card. (SPEECH) Many issuers are sending out cards now that actually have a contactless RFID chip in them. (DESCRIPTION) An individual at a restaurant enters a code on their phone, then taps it to a credit card reader on the table. (SPEECH) Or we could be talking about mobile payments. And that's the type of payment that you see consumers carrying around on their smartphones, so Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay. And that is the more prevalent contactless payment we see in the market today. So why are you implementing that touchless experience? We touched on that. (DESCRIPTION) A woman wearing a mask watches a man hover his phone over a reader. (SPEECH) You are trying to safeguard your customers, make sure that they have an opportunity to pay you without exchanging any touches with maybe the previous consumer or guest that was at your point of sale, and protect your staff as well, so from any illness, bacteria, or viruses that could be communicated through sharing a device or a card. So we need to talk about what touchless means and how that-- how you can get there. What are some of your options? And then of course risk and rewards that come with going touchless. (DESCRIPTION) A woman taps a Done button on a Payment Completed screen. (SPEECH) So when you go into touchless, your first option, and the most common option, is to go with contactless. EMV Contactless at the point of sale is most often driven, as I said, by a mobile wallet. (DESCRIPTION) An individual scans a credit card with the Apple Pay app. (SPEECH) So with that mobile wallet you have Apple Pay, and you may have the contactless card that's tap and go. But it's also the easiest form of payment for you to integrate if you have an EMV-enabled terminal. You simply need to enable contactless. And with that, then you'll start accepting those mobile wallet payments or the contactless cards. The mobile wallet payments are also some of the safest payments to accept, because in most cases you're not receiving clear card data from that mobile wallet. You're receiving a number that has already been tokenized, where it's replaced the original card number. And then on top of it, your terminal will encrypt that number and tokenize it further. So your view as a merchant customer, you're never exposed to that clear card data. And that's very important. One of the other ways in which you can go touchless, and this is very popular as well, is an app or a mobile method of accepting payment. As we evolve our businesses and we're looking for more ways to reach those consumers in a method where they're comfortable doing business with you, we've also added things like curbside service, delivery service, in addition to the traditional takeout window or stop and pick up inside. (DESCRIPTION) A man holds a phone in front of a keyboard with a food order on the screen. (SPEECH) And when you do that, quite often your consumer is looking for an opportunity to order from you remotely, as well as pay you remotely. And that would be, most possibly, through your app or through an app that you're sharing with other customers and merchants. So you have that opportunity through an e-commerce online transaction or an in-app transaction to take the order and take the payment. So you have multiple methods and services available to you to make those payments touchless. And some of the things that you do want to consider, because there's always that risk and reward, so the reward for getting as close to touchless as you can, and I make that comment deliberately. You may close. You may not be able to get all the way there. But the rewards for going mobile and working within card limit boundaries for contactless and mobile payments is that you get the EMV Liability Shift Protection. So in Canada, for example, the EMV Liability Shift for mobile and contactless ranges between $100 and $250. So someone making a purchase in Canada for $250, if that's approved by the issuer, then you have that EMV Liability Shift Protection. We have a very similar set of limits in the U.S. It varies quite a bit. It's not quite as straightforward or quite as simple. So you might have a $25 limit for Visa, but a $200 limit for American Express. And then there's other sub-limits in there. So that is something to talk to your processor about. What are those limits? And what's the reward for only accepting mobile payments within those limits? And when you do so, does it require a signature or a PIN entry? (DESCRIPTION) A woman uses a stylus on a store payment terminal screen. (SPEECH) Now if you want to accept payments over those limits, you can do that. You will need to plan ahead that you will either need to capture a signature or a PIN for the card. Or if you choose to eliminate those options, then you know you're taking the risk and you won't have the Liability Shift. So I know that sounds a little bit complicated. It's a good discussion to have with your processor. You have options. And you need to decide what's most important for your business, removing the touch from some of its payments and accepting liability or minimizing the touch and the liability will transfer in most cases. The other options that you have, I mentioned signature and signature capture. A signature now, because of card brand rule changes, is optional in most cases. So what does that mean? It means that there is no limit that requires you to capture a signature. And of course, there's always certain exceptions, and that would be in the lodging and the restaurant verticals. In lodging because you're authorizing that initial transaction at the front desk, adjusting it, and settling it for a different amount, a signature is still recommended, but not required. And for restaurants the same thing. If you're authorizing for one amount, you're adding a tip and settling for another amount. A signature is recommended, but not required. So what this new rule does is it removes the chargeback reason code of requiring a retrieval to see that a guest or customer signed the receipt. But if you're in the lodging or vertical markets, you'll want to talk to your processor before you totally remove the signature. Removing PIN is a little more complicated. You can do that. You can process all of your-- all of your debit cards as signature debit when that's available. If you're someone who really wants to take advantage of something like debit optimization or payment optimization, you'll find that you'll still need to accept PIN. So you will want to make a business decision whether that optimization outweighs the need for the or outweighs the need and the desire to go touchless. I don't even have to talk about cash. We already know cash is-- has always been dirty. There's no-- it's not getting better. Let's just put it that way. But you can also think of some other ways outside of the function of the terminal itself to help your consumer not touch the device, not hand anything to your staff. A terminal stand is a simple solution that holds the terminal steady so that perhaps the consumer can just insert the card, remove the card, and never touch the keys or the PIN pad. And then there's just the general customer adoption. (DESCRIPTION) Text, MasterCard saw a 40% jump in contactless payments in Q1 2020. (SPEECH) And latest environmental trends are showing that customers are readily adopting the mobile wallet, the contactless payments, and they're heeding the advice that they get from the their trusted advisors and their friends that they just don't want to touch the bacteria-encrusted terminal. That's how I heard it referred to recently on a show. It's something they're very aware of. And they're trying to avoid it. So encourage them by letting them know you accept contactless payments. (DESCRIPTION) Text, Use signage to let your customers know. A woman standing behind a shop counter smiles. (SPEECH) But if you don't have an app, partner with a company that can help you build an app and put a menu of items in there that your customers can choose from or that they know you will have in stock when they do come to the store. And let them check out on their phone. More and more companies are advertising a touchless experience at the point of sale. And you can do the same for your business. Help drive that customer adoption. I know too that you might be thinking about touchless, because it's been regulated. In many regions of the country, we have heard from our customers quite clearly that at the municipal level, the city, the county, the state, they've been told that they either have to go totally touchless at that PIN pad device, or they have to wipe it off after every guest or wipe it clean and disinfect it every two hours. There's a multitude of rules. And it is going to be hard to keep up with all of them. The more you go touchless, the more likely you are to be aligned with whatever you need to do to not only safeguard your customers and your staff, but be aligned with those rules and regulations. So consumer adoption is naturally occurring. The statistics from all of our card brand partners and our customer partners show that contactless is rising. In fact, in our processing environment, the contactless payments are double this year what they were last year. So it's rising rapidly. So at this particular point, all I can say is talk with your processor. Talk with your service provider and your point of sale provider. Touchless options are out there. And if you can't become totally touchless, because you have a loyalty card program or some other program that you're not ready to terminate yet or that's not ready to migrate to touchless, you can still minimize the number of touches and safeguard your environment. So good luck. I wish you the best. Please contact us if we can be of further assistance. (DESCRIPTION) U.S. Bank logo. Copyright 2020, U.S. Bank National Association Member F.D.I.C..