Law and Regulation

Durbin Amendment critics have long accused merchants of pocketing the billions they’ve saved since the amendment’s highly controversial debit card interchange price controls took effect two years ago Tuesday. Now, however, retailers are rolling out a study estimating that merchants passed on $5.86 billion in Durbin-related savings to consumers last …

All eyes in the payments business were riveted on Brooklyn earlier this month as lawyers wrangled in federal court over the proposed credit card interchange settlement. What many interested parties—including most observers in the courtroom that day–may have missed, however, is that the hearing brought to light for the first …

By Kevin Woodward   Six months after leaving point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc., Douglas G. Bergeron is leading a new enterprise targeting financial-services and payments companies for acquisition.   Dubbed Opus Global Holdings LLC, the new company has $500 million at its disposal to buy companies. Bergeron is collaborating …

  Eight years from their genesis, the lawsuits challenging bank card interchange now collectively known as MDL 1720 are scheduled to reach a milestone Thursday when U.S. District Judge John Gleeson convenes a so-called fairness hearing in his Brooklyn, N.Y., courtroom. The hearing’s purpose is for Gleeson to determine whether …

The Internal Revenue Service is delaying for a year its planned withholding requirement for payment-card-accepting merchants whose names and taxpayer identification numbers (TINs) supplied by their merchant processor do not match the corresponding information the IRS has on file, the Electronic Transactions Association reported to its membership today. The delay …

By Jim Daly Following a summer of uncertainty over whether millions of uninsured consumers would be unable to buy medical insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) because they didn’t have a checking account, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) this week issued a rule that requires …

By John Stewart n The inexorable economics of the Durbin Amendment are beginning to make themselves felt in the vibrant business of network-branded gift cards. n JPMorgan Chase & Co., one of a handful of major banks that offer Visa- and MasterCard-branded gift cards, this spring stopped selling its Visa …

By Jim Daly Plenty of Americans are still getting free checking, but not as many as last year, according to new findings from the American Bankers Association. The Washington, D.C.-based trade group’s latest annual consumer survey says 55% of bank customers spend nothing each month for banking services and ATM …

Findings from an overlooked Federal Reserve Board report from last March portend that the possible cuts in debit card interchange as a result of a major court decision last month could be even bigger than many observers initially thought. In the report, the Fed said that authorization, clearing, and settlement …

By Jim Daly The Federal Reserve on Wednesday said it would appeal the July 31 decision by a federal judge overturning the board’s rule implementing the Durbin Amendment, the section of 2010’s Dodd-Frank Act that regulates debit cards. The news came from Scott Alvarez, the Fed’s general counsel, at a …