Author: Gary Munro

Gary Munro, Principal Consultant, has over 30 years experience in electronic payments, including design and delivery of point of sale solutions to meet the specific requirements of the larger UK Acquirers, including Worldpay and Global Payments. Since joining Consult Hyperion, Gary has led Consult Hyperion’s retail transaction activities, advising retail banks, acquirers and start-ups on the hardware and software solutions that best meet their commercial and functional requirements. Gary led the team that delivered the world’s first mobile downloadable card payment acceptance device. He has helped international card schemes with all aspects of EMV card acceptance and national debit schemes with e-commerce acceptance.

PIN: we need to talk about our relationship

14th February 202214th February 2022by Gary MunroLeave a comment

16 years on from PIN day (Valentines Day 2006) how is our relationship with PIN holding up?

Last year Dave Birch postulated that PIN was in decline and indeed no longer necessary as our mobile phones make use of various biometrics to authenticate us and our transactions, but as we often remind ourselves in Chyp, we’re not normal. UK Finance statistics tells us that whilst the use of Apple Pay & Google Pay at the Point of Sale is on the rise, the humble plastic card is still the preferred way to pay.

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Will Brexit make stealing bank cards attractive again?

2nd February 20212nd February 2021by Gary Munro2 Comments

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece for our friends at Smartex; ‘Brexit and the UK Finance’s proposed £100 contactless limit’. Perhaps a title more worthy of grabbing readers would be ‘Will Brexit make stealing bank cards attractive again?’

The pandemic has accelerated consumer behaviour that has been teetering for the last decade. The desire for contact-free (and therefore contactless) transactions, has meant a significant trend in consumers becoming comfortable with tapping their cards and perhaps more interestingly, their phones (devices/wearables). We’ve seen merchants switch from hand scribbled ‘cash only’ signs, to ‘please use cards (devices etc) wherever possible’. Some stores have completely rejected cash altogether.

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Future-Ready Payments Processing

17th November 202024th November 2020by Gary MunroLeave a comment

Payment Processing Platforms

At Consult Hyperion we spend a lot of our time looking into payments processing platforms for our clients. Over recent months we’ve delivered;

technical due diligence, assessing their capabilities
security and vulnerability analysis on networks and products
designed fundamental security architectures for new payments solutions
advised clients on the selection of payment platform solutions
and helped design new platforms or extended the capability of their existing platforms

It’s fair to say we have a comprehensive understanding of payments processing. The products and solutions offered by Fintechs, Banks, Neobanks etc. rely on the capabilities of the underlying payments platform(s).

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What does Apple’s purchase of Mobeewave mean for SoftPOS?

25th August 202025th August 2020by Gary Munro2 Comments

Using mobile devices for securing payments has been, and continues to be, a key area of interest for Consult Hyperion and our customers. We have helped many of our clients in this space from: providing advice on the market landscape, advising on security, testing security, developing security architectures, and building solutions. Apple’s purchase of Mobeewave a couple of weeks ago has caught our, and everyone else’s, attention. This gives us some time to reflect on this and consider what it means for the SoftPOS industry and ecosystems.

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