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The provisions of the Durbin Amendment to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act are starting to hurt smaller issuers’ debit card income even though these financial institutions are explicitly exempted from the law’s cap on interchange rates, according to a debit expert. “This phenomenon is happening as we speak,” said Tony …
Read More »Retail ATM Deployers Look for New Revenues As Interchange Declines
Interchange rates on ATM transactions are falling and may not have hit bottom yet, so independent distributors of ATMs need to look for additional sources of revenue. That is the conclusion of a recently released white paper entitled, “The Future of Interchange in the United States,” sponsored by the …
Read More »Fiserv Enters Real-Time P2P Payments Fray with Popmoney Instant Payments
Fiserv Inc. on Wednesday announced it is adding a capability to its Popmoney person-to-person payment service that will let users send money within seconds to intended recipients. The new feature, called Popmoney Instant Payments, relies on debit-network clearing and comes as more and more processors are harnessing these networks …
Read More »EFT Networks and Discover Strike a Deal That Could Resolve a Chip Card Controversy
With help from Discover Financial Services, regional electronic funds transfer networks this week took a major step toward ending a dilemma over how merchants can route PIN-debit transactions made on chip cards through EFT networks and still meet the Durbin Amendment’s transaction-routing requirements. Previously, the main routes available for …
Read More »EMV Chips Get Credit for a Big Drop in Canadian Debit Card Skimming Fraud
With the U.S. embarking on its gradual implementation of EMV chip card technology beginning this year, recent news from Canada’s national debit network should be encouraging. Introduction of EMV—the Europay-MasterCard-Visa standard—in Canada has helped reduce debit card fraud losses on Interac cards due to skimming to the lowest level since …
Read More »The Fed Takes a Pass on Proposing Changes to Its Durbin Debit Card Regs
The Federal Reserve Board on Tuesday released another report on debit card revenues and expenses and says it does not plan to propose changes to its controversial debit regulations implementing the Durbin Amendment in 2010’s Dodd-Frank Act. Dodd-Frank requires the Fed to report on the debit card market every two …
Read More »Pulse’s Tie to Acculynk Furthers Trend Toward EFT-Based P2P Services
The effort to harness debit card networks for near-instant person-to-person payments is moving apace. The latest development is this week’s announcement that the Houston-based Pulse electronic funds transfer network has enabled a service that will let cardholders pay each other by entering their debit card PINs on a so-called …
Read More »Visa Seeks Reconciliation With Merchants As Its Debit Losses Narrow
New Visa Inc. chief executive Charles W. Scharf used his first earnings conference call with analysts Wednesday to offer an olive branch to U.S. merchants. Scharf’s comments came on the heels of an earnings and operational report for fiscal 2013’s first quarter that show strong U.S. Visa credit card growth …
Read More »Visa Offers a ‘Generic, Unbranded’ AID to Make EMV Durbin-Compliant
Visa Inc. on Monday became the latest payments network to offer the U.S. debit industry a solution for the problem of how to route EMV debit transactions in compliance with federal law. The proposal comes after debit networks on Thursday spurned a solution that MasterCard Inc. floated two weeks …
Read More »Eye on Earnings: Green Dot’s Wal-Mart ‘Challenges;’ Debit to Slow for MasterCard
The good news for prepaid card program manager Green Dot Corp. in the fourth quarter: purchase volumes, revenues, and active cards all increased. The bad news: American Express Co.’s new Bluebird prepaid card now being sold at Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s U.S. stores is taking some business from Green Dot’s own …
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