Fraudsters are becoming better organized and building industrial-strength infrastructures to commit fraud, making their actions harder to detect and prevent, says Visa Inc.’s Fall 2025 Biannual Threats Report. The report, which pulls data from the Visa’s global network, identifies the five biggest fraud threats facing the payments ecosystem: the industrialization …
Read More »New CFPB Director Nominated and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 11/20/25
President Trump nominated Stuart Levenbach to be the new permanent director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Levenbach is a senior official at the Office of Management and Budget. Acting director Russell Vought’s term is set to expire in December under the Vacancies Act. Toast Inc. said it will grant $10,000 to …
Read More »Another Merchant Lawsuit Settlement Is Reached, This One on EMV-Related Chargebacks
A lawsuit filed in March 2016 over how the four U.S. card brands handled the liability shift during the EMV migration more than 10 years ago, along with unreimbursed chargebacks associated with it, has reached its next step. The suit is over unreimbursed liability-shift chargebacks made with a credit or …
Read More »‘Not the Final Chapter:’ Questions Arise About the Latest Interchange Settlement
As the dust settles around the latest settlement agreement in Visa Inc.’s and Mastercard Inc.’s long running legal battle with merchants over card-acceptance fees, how the offer will impact the payments industry is coming into focus. Early reaction to the agreement from payments experts is that interchange relief will be …
Read More »New Gen’s Agentic Commerce Platform Launches and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 11/14/25
E-commerce technology company New Generation released Kepler, an agentic commerce platform for retailers. Kepler has a suite of tools to help merchants structure, analyze, and present their product data in formats that both humans and artificial intelligence engines can understand, New Gen said. The Pix real-time payments network in Brazil is likely to surpass …
Read More »FedNow Limit Bumped to $10 Million and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 11/13/25
The Federal Reserve announced its FedNow real-time payments network has raised its transaction limit to $10 million from $1 million. The tenfold increase is expected to enable more transactions for such usages as corporate treasury and payroll, vendor payments, and real-estate transactions. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a release saying it may not …
Read More »In Stablecoin Payments, ‘We Intend to Be the Leader,’ Says Circle’s CEO
The payments industry for some time has been seeking meaningful growth in applications based on cryptocurrency, and early on Wednesday, one of the industry’s biggest players in that corner of the marketplace said it is making that happen with stablecoins—digital currency whose value is tied to fiat money like the …
Read More »Here’s What’s Inside the Latest Offer to End the Long-Running Legal Battle Over Merchant Fees
Defendants in the long-running legal battle over merchants’ card-acceptance costs officially filed an Amended Settlement Agreement Monday. The agreement, filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, will provide plaintiff merchants meaningful relief by remedying the concerns expressed by the court over a previously …
Read More »A Deal Looks No Closer In Merchants’ Long-Running Legal Battle Over Acceptance Fees
Merchant organizations contend an expected settlement offer in their ongoing, two-decades-old lawsuit against Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. over card-acceptance fees does not address the underlying problem that leads to high card-acceptance costs in the first place. Merchant opposition surfaced over the weekend after a story in The Wall Street …
Read More »COMMENTARY: How AI-Powered Deepfake Voice Scams Are Redefining Account Takeover
The financial-services industry faces a threat even more sophisticated and convincing than traditional cybercrime: AI-powered deepfake voice scams. Unlike conventional account-takeover attempts that rely on stolen credentials and digital channels, these attacks use artificial intelligence to replicate customers’ voices with startling accuracy. They are able to bypass traditional authentication methods …
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