November, 2022

• 1 November

  The Law is the Law

  

  The business of routing payment card transactions has been much in the news lately, first with a bill that would legislate network choice for credit card transactions and then with action by the Federal Reserve to reinforce a requirement that was supposed to guarantee merchants a choice of networks for …

October, 2022

• 1 October

  The Great Experiment

  

  Imagine initiating a payment on your phone and seeing it settle into your payee’s account as fast—or just about as fast—as if you had handed him the same sum in cash. The dream of instant payments has been around probably for as long as electronic rails have existed for money …

September, 2022

• 1 September

  Nacha’s Million-Dollar Solution

  

  Last month, the U.S. automated clearing house network reported a double-digit increase year-over-year in transactions in the second quarter while dollar volume ballooned 94%. Nacha, the network operator, also said the volume of all transactions on the system reached 7.5 billion, up from 7.3 billion in the first quarter. That’s …

August, 2022

• 1 August

  A Remarkable 18 Months

  

  Welcome to Digital Transactions’ August issue, which is also our annual Buyers’ Guide. With this latest edition of the Guide, we thought we’d take a minute away from all the products and vendors that appear in the following pages to look at a few numbers that describe the industry. We …

July, 2022

• 1 July

  The Crypto Rout

  

  Breathes there a soul out there who yet harbors ambitions for Bitcoin to become a store of value, unit of account, and medium of exchange? If so, please step forward and identify yourself—and ignore the snickering. We aren’t yet ready to abandon the hope entirely that digital currencies can function …

June, 2022

• 1 June

  A Cross-Border Comeback

  

  Pummeled for nearly two years by the coronavirus pandemic, payments networks have lately found cause for optimism in a key market: cross-border travel. Hit hard by pandemic restrictions, that business is staging a comeback. Mastercard Inc. reported in mid-April its cross-border volume in March climbed above numbers last seen in …

May, 2022

• 1 May

  ’We Can’t Let Our Guard Down’

  

  Be careful what you wish for. For years, payments processors have contended that state and local lawmakers and regulators would enact better regulations if they were better-informed about how payments work. The good news is that’s now happening. The bad news is that state lawmakers’ understanding of the payments business …

April, 2022

• 1 April

  Responding to the Russian Bear

  

  It was hard last month to view the events in Ukraine with an attitude of studied detachment—the attitude, after all, that we business journalists practice when examining industry news. We are so bound up in that tradition of objectivity, in fact, that it surprises us when a momentous event shakes …

March, 2022

• 1 March

  Guess Who’s Growing Fast

  

  The pandemic has speeded adoption of the automated clearing house network for business-to-business payments, while transactions cleared and settled through the network on the same day they’re initiated are booming, according to full-year 2021 numbers released early last month by Nacha, the governing body for the nationwide network. We’ve written …

February, 2022

• 1 February

  Amazon, Visa, And the Rate Wars

  

  Will the conflict between merchants and the card networks over acceptance fees ever find resolution? The argument, which has been in progress for years, may never find total resolution, but perhaps the parties can agree on some accommodations. Amazon.com Inc.’s decision last month to pull back from its threat to …