Host card emulation (HCE) was invented back in 2012. It was supposed to do for NFC on Android what Apple Pay has done for NFC in the iOS ecosystem. But it’s taken longer, a lot longer, for a robust Android-based NFC capability to get deployed. In this conversation with HCE inventor Doug Yeager, CEO of SimplyTapp, we review how HCE works, what it requires, and take a look at why it’s taken so long to gain momentum. The good news is that momentum is increasing with a growing set of HCE technology providers pushing it forward and, it appears, a pipeline of HCE-based apps on the way. 

The domain of point of sale (POS) has three legs to its security stool: EMV, point to point encryption, and card number tokenization. Card not present (CNP) merchants and issuers have the more challenging task of assembling fraud mitigation tools on their own. The networks have had, until EMVCo’s move into payment card tokenization, not much more than 3D Secure to offer. Merchants and card issuers have a lot of transaction and fraud data and when that data gets shared, improvements are possible. That’s what Ethoca is about. Its growing network of merchants and issuers share their fraud data to improve fraud detection and lower chargeback rates. Take a listen to this discussion with Keith Briscoe, Ethoca’s CMO, on what’s possible through collaboration.