Law and Regulation

Newtek Business Services Corp., a small-business lender and payment processor, has received approval from the Federal Reserve to become a bank-holding company and financial-holding company through its acquisition of National Bank of New York City. Newtek entered into an agreement to acquire the bank in August 2021. Approval of the …

The PCI Security Standards Council released its PCI Mobile Payments on COTS standard that addresses security requirements for services that enable merchants to accept cardholder PINs or contactless payments using a smart phone or other commercial off-the-shelf mobile device.Private equity firms Centerbridge Partners L.P. and Bridgeport Partners completed the acquisition of transaction processor Computer Services Inc. for $1.6 …

Varo Bank early Tuesday announced it has become the first digital neobank to be admitted to the Zelle peer-to-peer payments network. The bank, a unit of the 7-year-old, San Francisco-based Varo Money Inc., said it will now offer payments via Zelle through its mobile app. “Adding Zelle to our product …

The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC early Tuesday issued a white paper alleging that federal regulators are effectively blocking national banks from issuing stablecoins. This is despite the agencies’ own conclusion that the banks have the authority to issue the digital currency, the paper says. The paper also follows an …

As one who has spent an entire career working with community banks, credit unions, and merchants, I can say it’s abundantly clear how they all suffer from a broken payments system, with the Fed’s automated clearing house being the lone exception. While merchants and community banks don’t share the same …

The payments platform Orum said it will rely on account-verification technology from open-banking provider MX Technologies Inc. to offer money-transfer capability targeted at fintechs.Checkout-free shopping provider Grabango said its in-store contactless checkout service is available at a Chevron U.S.A. Inc. location in California.Bluefin Payment Systems acquired TECS Payment Systems, an Austria-based omnichannel payments provider. Terms were not …

Socure Inc., a provider of digital-identity verification and fraud detection, has become the latest company to join the expanding universe of open-banking technology providers. On Tuesday, Socure announced the launch of Socure Account Intelligence, an application that verifies domestic bank-account status and ownership of the account into which funds are …

With data sharing via open-banking arrangements becoming increasingly vital in the payments business, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday released an outline of a “data-rights rule” it is preparing that would govern how consumers’ financial information is shared among players such as banks and payments companies. The proposed rule …

It was only a matter of time before the two big international card networks responded to a recent Federal Reserve requirement that issuers make at least two unrelated networks available to merchants for debit card transactions. Late Tuesday, Visa Inc.’s chief financial officer, Vasant Prabhu, said the impact of the …

BNY Mellon announced early Monday it has launched a payments platform called Vaia, which allows clients to offer real-time payments, same-day automated clearing house transfers, tokenized payments, debit cards, and payments through the Zelle peer-to-peer payments network. The nation’s 10th-largest bank by assets said the panoply of payments capabilities can …