Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, September 24

• Coming Soon to Checkouts: Microchip-Card Payment Systems: Starting next month, retailers that haven’t upgraded their payment systems to read E.M.V. microchips — the small, metallic rectangles that are increasingly prevalent on the front of American charge cards — will bear the financial liability for some fraudulent charges. (Gas stations have an extra two years to make the switch for charges from their fuel pumps.) E.M.V. stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa, the companies that created the standard in the mid-1990s. The new technology is a significant change from the current system, under which card issuers absorb most of the losses for in-person transactions made with counterfeit or stolen cards. Banks and merchants lost an estimated $16.3 billion last year globally on fraudulent transactions, and America has been their biggest problem spot. The country accounts for nearly half of the global losses, despite generating only 21 percent of the worldwide transaction volume, according to the Nilson Report, an industry researcher.Visa drew a line in the sand four years ago: American merchants would have until October 2015 to update their systems or absorb the losses themselves. Other major card networks quickly adopted the same deadline. Just days before the deadline, few merchants are ready. A handful of national retailers — most prominently, Walmart and Target — have invested in E.M.V.-ready terminals and spoken publicly about the switch, but many others have stayed silent. Around 27 percent of American merchants will be ready to process E.M.V. cards next month, according to a survey conducted this month by the Strawhecker Group, a consulting firm for the payments industry. For small sellers, the readiness rate is even lower. Banks and industry groups estimate that one in five will have their new systems running by Oct. 1. Both systems will continue to be available during a lengthy transition period.

• SoftBank Drops on Decline in Alibaba Stake’s Market Value: SoftBank Group Corp. dropped to the lowest in two years as the market values of its biggest U.S. holdings, Alibaba and Sprint, plunged. Billionaire Masayoshi Son’s mobile carrier and Internet investment company fell as much as 6.9 percent to 5,835 yen, the lowest since July 2013. The slump came on the first Japanese trading day after the lockup on Alibaba shares was lifted one year after its initial public offering.SoftBank has more than 1,000 investments, and its three biggest shareholdings of Alibaba, Sprint and Yahoo Japan Corp. have dropped by 700 billion yen ($5.8 billion) over the past 10 days to 8.7 trillion yen. Japan’s third-largest wireless carrier also slumped with rivals on concerns that revenue may weaken after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the nation’s mobile-phone rates were too high. Alibaba fell for a fifth day Wednesday in New York, slumping to as low as $59.68, compared with its IPO price of $68.

• Pandora says has paid $500 million in artist royalties in past year: Internet radio service Pandora Media Inc said it paid nearly $500 million in artist royalties over the past 12 months, bringing the total to more than $1.5 billion in about 10 years. "It took us nearly nine years to generate the first billion dollars in royalties, and just over a year to increase that total by 50 percent," Chief Executive Brian McAndrews said in a statement on Wednesday. Pandora gets revenue from advertising and paid subscriptions.