Law and Regulation

An effort backed by many of the nation’s major retailer trade groups to put a lid on credit card acceptance costs took a big step forward Monday with the introduction in the House of Representatives of the Credit Card Competition Act. The bill, launched in July in the Senate, seeks …

Deployment of cryptocurrency ATMs in 2022 significantly lags the pace seen last year, and one factor hastening the slowdown is increased regulatory scrutiny, sources say. Crypto ATMs are specialized kiosks that allow consumers to purchase Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies using cash or a debit card. Increasingly, regulators in several countries …

As the Federal Reserve prepares to raise interest rates for what would be the fifth time this year, U.S credit card holders are already feeling the squeeze. Some 60% of all cardholders are not only in debt to the issuer, they have been in debt for a year or more, …

Long anticipated, a report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau offers suggestions on how regulation might aid the buy now, pay later industry, but doesn’t recommend a wholesale review of its practices. Among the risks outlined in the “Buy Now, Pay Later: Market trends and consumer impacts” report, released Thursday, are …

The decision over the weekend by three of the nation’s largest payments networks to introduce a new category code for gun shops could raise more questions for the payments industry than answers. The move by American Express Co., Mastercard Inc., and Visa Inc. would for the first time create a …

In an effort to combat the rise of financial crimes, such as fraud, Socure Inc. has enhanced its know your customer (KYC) identity-verification solution. Socure says the update gives customers stronger tools—such as reason codes and field-validation intelligence, which tests the results of machine-learning models against live data—to verify the …

Underscoring the rapid growth of digital payments between individuals, the Zelle Network early Thursday celebrated five years in business with numbers showing it has processed more than 5 billion transactions worth almost $1.5 trillion. In that time, almost 1,700 banks and credit unions have added Zelle to their mobile apps, …

While the Federal Reserve mulls the concept of a national digital dollar, private-sector actors are working toward the same end. The Digital Dollar Project early Wednesday launched what it calls a Technical Sandbox Program in an effort, it said, to help advance understanding of the technical requirements undergirding a central …

The Federal Reserve Board on Monday afternoon narrowed the window for the launch of FedNow, its real-time payment service, to the weeks between May and July of 2023. The announcement, which came in a short address by Fed Vice Chair Lael Brainard, is the latest in a series of updates …

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides low-income families with benefits to supplement their food budget, suffered a nationwide outage on Sunday, according to news reports. The cause of the outage, which reportedly affected millions of recipients, is unknown. On Sunday several state agencies that help the U.S. Department …