Law and Regulation

  A recent Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities’ advisory about potentially requiring independent sales organizations and processors to obtain money-transmitter licenses could pose problems for the payments industry. “It’s the wrong execution of the right idea,” Scott Talbott, senior vice president for government affairs at the Electronic Transactions Association, …

The controversial Dodd-Frank Act scored just 20% in an impromptu popularity poll Sunday afternoon, with its only support coming from someone in the federal government. The quick straw poll was hardly representative as the mere five respondents were panelists at a conference for payments executives, but the results do reflect …

Implementing EMV chip card payments can be anything but a cheap and easy plug-and-play for small businesses, according to testimony several merchants gave before a U.S. House of Representatives committee Wednesday. Art Potash, chief executive of Potash Markets, a 65-year-old family-run Chicago grocery operation with three stores, told the House …

Point-of-sale terminal maker Ingenico Group has teamed up with Bitcoin merchant acquirer BitPay Inc. to retrofit a traditional POS terminal for Bitcoin acceptance in stores. And the U.S. Marshals Service is planning to auction off the last of the Bitcoin that the FBI seized in 2013 when it busted Ross …

By Jim Daly New York has its new BitLicense and California is actively looking at regulations for virtual currencies, but the organization that promotes uniform state laws is working on a prospective law that would guide regulations for alternative and mobile payments. The Chicago-based Uniform Law Commission (ULC) created its Alternative …

A new update of a list detailing where public authorities have intervened in payment card merchant pricing and rules shows only one country, Malaysia, was added over the past year, but authorities took new regulatory measures in places on the predecessor list, particularly the European Union and the United States. …

While many payments firms have complained about the expensive and time-consuming process of getting state money-transmitter licenses, and, more recently, of potentially needing licenses to operate virtual currencies, the regulatory pendulum occasionally swings the other way. Late last month, Illinois quietly dropped a 2013 cease-and-desist order against merchant processor Square …

By John Stewart Evidence emerged this week that the Durbin Amendment may not be cutting debit card acceptance costs for merchants as effectively as its backers intended. Nor has it prompted many merchants to pass on their savings to consumers, according to a paper published in Economic Quarterly, a publication …

A federal judge on Tuesday nullified a pending settlement between American Express Co. and merchants in a class-action lawsuit over AmEx’s anti-steering rules because of improper conduct by a co-lead attorney for the merchants. The decision immediately cast a shadow over the $5.7 billion settlement Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. …

A federal appellate court on Tuesday reinstated a proposed class-action lawsuit over ATM pricing rules that independent ATM operators and consumers filed against Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. in 2011 but a district court dismissed in 2013. The ruling originated with three lawsuits filed by the National ATM Council Inc., …