Law and Regulation

By Jim Daly The Canadian government’s move last week to strengthen its Code of Conduct for the payment card industry and the European Union’s approval in March of rock-bottom interchange rates for credit and debit cards has observers wondering if more regulation is in store for the U.S. merchant-acquiring industry. …

By Jim Daly Canada’s Finance Minister, Joe Oliver, on Monday issued an update to the government’s 5-year-old Code of Conduct for the credit and debit card industry. The update adds consumer protections, addresses the growth of mobile payments and premium cards, and makes other changes intended to give merchants more …

By Jim Daly PayPal Inc. says the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau might sue it over its credit products by June 30. The possible lawsuit would stem from an investigation dating to 2013, when the CFPB in August of that year filed so-called civil investigative demands (CIDs) for documents, testimony …

The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau named four merchant-acquiring companies as defendants in a lawsuit against six people and their associated debt-collection companies that allegedly attempted to collect millions of dollars in so-called “phantom debts” from consumers that the consumers either did not owe or were not owed to the debt …

American Express Co. and the U.S. Department of Justice submitted proposals Monday for rules changes conforming to a federal judge’s ruling that AmEx’s current ban on merchants steering customers to cheaper forms of payment violates antitrust law. The proposals show the two sides remain far apart, and AmEx reiterated that …

By Jim Daly Target Corp.’s $10 million settlement of a consumer class action stemming from its late-2013 data breach is significant not only because of its size, but also because it signals that courts are becoming more attentive to the harm consumers suffer from data breaches even if the payment …

By Jim Daly Legal U.S. marijuana sales grew 74% to $2.7 billion in 2014 from $1.5 billion the year before, but you wouldn’t know it by the payment card and other electronic payments generated by the budding industry, according to a new research report. Even though about 20 states have …

Payments and other financial-services executives have long complained about what they call patent trolls, typically individuals who gain a patent on what some regard as a longstanding business method and then sue practitioners for infringement. In some instances, these cases have succeeded in wringing large settlements out of banks and …

By Digital Transactions News Staff The big SIM and EMV chip manufacturer Gemalto NV on Wednesday acknowledged that an alleged operation by U.S. and British electronic spy agencies targeting the company “probably happened,” but the Amsterdam-based firm downplayed its impact. The alleged operation in 2010 and 2011 by the United …

By Jim Daly and John Stewart Continuing its recent string of setbacks, American Express Co. Thursday lost a crucial federal court fight in which it defended policies banning merchants from steering AmEx cardholders to cheaper forms of payment. The U.S. Department of Justice and 17 state attorneys general challenged the …