Law and Regulation

Square and Afterpay merchants counted 70 million transactions over the Black Friday-Cyber Monday holiday weekend, up 14% from the same period in 2022, Square said. In-person shopping increased 15% year-over-year. Amendments under consideration by Australia’s national government would impose on digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay the same regulations as those enacted …

Merchants and financial institutions that use 3-D Secure to help vet online transactions in markets that require its use see fraud rates that are three to six times lower than for all card-not-present transactions. That’s one finding from a Outseer-sponsored report completed by the research and consulting firm Datos Insights. …

The Electronic Payments Coalition issued a press release late Tuesday taking issue with a New York Times op-ed video that argues merchants and consumers already pay a high price for rewards cards and expresses support for the Credit Card Competition Act. In its rebuttal responding to the video, Richard Hunt, …

More than 30 million phishing attacks were launched against online stores, payment systems, and banks during the first 10 months of 2023, according to the latest report from Kaspersky Labs, a Moscow-based cybersecurity and antivirus provider operated by a holding company in the United Kingdom. E-commerce platforms bore the brunt …

A new federal lawsuit against Apple Inc. alleges the iPhone maker restricts competition in peer-to-peer payments by hampering rivalry with its own Apple Cash app. The restrictions, the suit charges, include provisions against what the suit calls “feature competition,” such as cryptocurrency payments, that could moderate pricing for peer-to-peer payment …

The People’s Bank of China and the National Administration of Financial Regulation, China’s financial regulatory body, on Monday greenlighted Mastercard Inc.’s joint venture, Mastercard NUCC Information Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd, to commence domestic bankcard clearing in China. The approval process took about three years. In February 2020, China’s central bank …

Small businesses claim they have legitimate concerns that their larger counterparts will be the beneficiaries of lower card acceptance costs should the Credit Card Competition Act become law, argues the Small Business Payments Alliance, a trade organization recently formed by the Electronic Payments Coalition. Among the concerns about how the …

Banks in Zelle, the peer-to-peer payment network operated by Early Warning Services LLC, have been issuing refunds to consumers duped by fraudsters into sending money using the network, according to a report Monday by Reuters.  The reimbursements, which the banks have reportedly been paying out since June 30, represent a …

The political battle over the Credit Card Competition Act has heated up as the Small Business Payments Alliance (SBPA), a recently formed merchant trade group, has come out in opposition to the proposed legislation. The group argues that, if passed, the CCCA would harm small businesses. The SBPA, which held …

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau late Tuesday said it is expanding its efforts to increase oversight of large, non-bank technology firms with a proposed rule that would subject companies that issue digital wallets to the same regulations as those that cover wallets from financial institutions. The proposed rule, which would …