Law and Regulation

Observers of the payments industry who wonder how the Federal Reserve’s proposed rate reductions for debit card acceptance might be received by the nation’s biggest processors heard an unequivocal answer early Tuesday from at least one of them.  “Any time the cost of acceptance goes down, it’s a positive for …

Last year, credit card issuers charged consumers more than $105 billion in interest and more than $25 billion in fees, $14.5 billion of which came from late fees, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s biennial credit card market report. Credit card holders paid about 20% of their average balance …

The Federal Reserve Board’s proposal Wednesday to make a 31% reduction in the main component of its debit card interchange ceiling for large issuers touches on a longstanding sore point among merchants and has already sparked a spirited debate in the payments industry. Merchant groups, long riled by debit card …

With potential regulation of credit card interchange looming and with the unwavering demand from merchants for lower card-acceptance costs, the possibility that interchange as it’s known today may dramatically change can’t be entirely dismissed—but don’t count on its demise. That was the conclusion at the Money 20/20 trade show this …

The Federal Reserve Board is set to revisit its longstanding limit on debit card interchange on Wednesday, and most observers expect the Fed to lower it. But ask Visa Inc. about the matter—as analysts did Tuesday afternoon during the network’s September-quarter earnings call—and its top executives outwardly at least profess …

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s oversight effort in data-sharing regulation is more than a year old, but with its newly proposed data-rights rule—released last week—the agency is making a substantial move in the field. Under the Personal Financial Data Rights rule, consumers would have the power to share data associated …

A day after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau floated a proposed data rights rule, reaction from the payments industry has been largely positive. The rule aims at governing the practice of sharing consumer data through open banking. The proposed rule would require financial institutions to share data at a consumer’s …

The top management at Discover Financial Inc. said early Thursday its issues with regulatory compliance and merchant overcharges continue to cast a shadow over the company but could be on the way to being solved. The problems, which included misclassification of merchants resulting in overcharges for card acceptance, came to …

The Federal Reserve Board of Governors will consider revisions to its cap on debit card swipe fees at its meeting next Wednesday. The announcement was made as part of a public notice about the upcoming board meeting. While no further details were provided about the Fed’s intentions, retailers made it …

Nacha, the governing body for the automated clearing house network, reported the system processed 212 million same-day payments worth $608 billion in the September quarter, up 20% and 27.1%, respectively, over the same period last year. Total volume for all ACH payment types for the quarter came to 7.8 billion, …