May, 2024

• 1 May

  Behind a Card Industry Group’s Strategy to Stop the CCCA

  

  A trade group representing card networks and issuers is taking aim at restaurant surcharges and price increases by large grocers as part of its efforts to defeat the Credit Card Competition Act. The Electronic Payments Coalition earlier this spring fired its first salvo in its new campaign against the CCCA. …
• 1 May

  Security Notes: AI, Privacy, and the End of Credit Cards—Again

  

  The initial penetration was slow. The original Diner’s Club credit card of 1949 was too different to quickly catch on. But it had a compelling message, as the historic burden of trusting the customer was shifted away from the merchant, a service for which the merchant was willing to pay. …
• 1 May

  Payments 3.0: A Judge’s Common Sense Vs. Regulatory Overreach

  

  The saga of PayPal versus the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau entered a new chapter early this spring when PayPal won a favorable ruling from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. On March 29, Judge Richard Leon ordered that the Bureau not require PayPal to provide the short-form …

April, 2024

• 1 April

  Security Notes: The Coming Shift in Payments Authentication

  

  For many restaurants, interchange fees are the third expense category after food and labor. Issuers pull some savvy tricks in the form of rewards cards, which consumers are drawn to and merchants can’t reject, though they face higher fees to carry the burden of the rewards. For quite a few …
• 1 April

  Payments 3.0: Risk And Opportunity for Cap One And Discover

  

  The planned acquisition of Discover Financial Services by Capital One Financial Corp. will reshape the competitive landscape for consumer deposit accounts in the United States. Digital Transactions reported earlier that Capital One has already announced its intention to move its entire debit portfolio to the Discover Network once the deal …
• 1 April

  An Active Year Helps Boost Results for Canada’s Nuvei

  

  The big Montreal-based processor Nuvei Corp. has had a busy year since its headline acquisition early in 2023 of Atlanta-based Paya Holdings Inc., and last month things got even busier. The Montreal-based company confirmed it had created a “special committee” of independent directors to review “expressions of interest” regarding offers …

March, 2024

• 1 March

  Security Notes: Payments As a National Security Vulnerability

  

  Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, recently testified in Congress that China has cyber-penetrated the United States and that its embedded cyber weapons can be unleashed on the day hostilities break out. This is a sobering thought. Our entire life is cyber-managed: the way we distribute power, water, gas; …
• 1 March

  PayPal Maps a Fastlane for Checkout

  

  A new way of shopping using the PayPal app and related services is in the offing. Announced late in January, the update includes a one-click guest checkout experience, digital receipts PayPal calls Smart Receipts, a revised offers platform, and improvements to business profiles for Venmo, its social peer-to-peer payments service. …
• 1 March

  Payments 3.0: The Delicate Balance of Closed-Loop Cards

  

  As banks and merchants fight over interchange regulation in Washington, the real struggle is in shoppers’ wallets, phones, and Web browsers. Last month, I wrote about how merchants use discounts, surcharges, and direct bank payments to influence consumer behavior. This month, we’ll look at another tool that merchants can use …

February, 2024

• 1 February

  Security Notes: Time for Hard Thinking About Crypto

  

  On Jan. 10, 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission enabled the public to trade Bitcoin without resorting to its cryptographic attributes. This action opens the maverick currency to a massive influx of U.S. dollars—a critical milestone in world affairs. When Digital Transactions was launched, digital transactions were transactions of digitally …