Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
We couldn’t recruit David Letterman to help us with this article, but what follows are the Top 10 U.S. payments events of 2013 as identified by the Retail Payments Risk Forum, a research and industry-dialogue unit at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. 10. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized …
Read More »Court’s Greenlight for Settlement Hardly Signals Battle’s End As Merchants Gird for Appeals
Retailers, and the trade associations representing them, that are opposed to a $5.7 billion settlement of a class-action antitrust case challenging credit card interchange rates are contesting federal judge John Gleeson’s affirmation Friday of the settlement amount. Defendants in the 8-year-old litigation, which was heard in the District Court of …
Read More »Federal Court Issues OK for Multibillion-Dollar Credit Card Interchange Settlement
Capping years of complex litigation, a federal court on Friday approved a controversial multibillion-dollar settlement of a class-action antitrust case challenging credit card interchange rates. With his imprimatur, Judge John Gleeson of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York has brought apparent—but only apparent—finality to a …
Read More »Payment Vendors Line Up to Serve Gamblers As States Okay Online Gaming
Online commerce has hit a trifecta of sorts. New Jersey on Tuesday became the third state, in addition to Nevada and Delaware, to allow some forms of online gaming. And with its debut, more payments companies are at work on providing services to gaming operators and their users. n Registered …
Read More »Postponement of October 2015 U.S. EMV Liability Shift Is Likely, a DTN Poll Finds
The first major deadline in the transformation of U.S. credit and debit cards from magnetic-stripe tokens to smart cards embedded with a chip is just under two years away. Come October 2015, the liability for fraudulent transactions shifts to merchants that do not support the chip card standard EMV. n …
Read More »Senate Hearing Recognizes Bitcoin’s Strengthening Toehold in Electronic Payments
Might the Bitcoin digital currency be heading toward legitimacy among skeptical regulators and law-enforcement officials? Testimony at a U.S. Senate committee hearing Monday indicated that government may be ready to make peace with Bitcoin and, by extension, other new digital forms of payment, though if and when these new systems …
Read More »Within Five Years, Caps on Credit Card Interchange Are Likely, According to a DTN Poll
With debit card interchange rates already regulated, a majority of respondents to a Digital Transactions News poll consider caps on credit card interchange within five years as very likely. n Though no such legislation is under review at this time, the response suggests few would be surprised should it appear. …
Read More »An Open Letter: Let’s Put a Stop to Criminal Practices in Our Industry—Now!
(An Open Letter to the Electronic Payments Industry) n On October 16, 2013, I delivered a keynote address to the Strategic Leadership Forum of the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) on my views of the evolution of the payments industry. At the beginning of this address, I told the audience that …
Read More »The ETA Responds to Heartland’s Bob Carr
In his Oct. 23, 2013, letter to the payments industry (“An Open Letter to the Electronic Payments Industry from Bob Carr”), the chairman and CEO of Heartland Payment Systems provides a compelling historical overview of the challenges faced by our industry some three decades ago. As detailed in his letter, …
Read More »Somewhat Warily, Payments Execs Acknowledge That Bitcoin Will Make Its Mark
By Jim Daly A summer poll of payments executives found that less than a third think Bitcoin and other so-called math-based virtual currencies will greatly change how money is moved within 10 years. But majorities, some strong, also think that Bitcoin will spur responses from PayPal Inc., the big wire-transfer …
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