Law and Regulation

Synthetic-identity fraud was the fastest growing type of fraud in 2025, accounting for 11% of total fraud globally, an eight-fold increase from 2024, says LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ annual cybercrime report. The explosion in synthetic identity fraud—which occurs when a criminal blends pieces of information belonging to multiple consumers to craft …

The average ransomware demand soared 70% to $4.24 million last year, while the average payment was up 36% to $682,702. Meanwhile, phishing remains the leading root cause of data-security incidents, accounting for 30%, according to the 12th annual “Data Security Incident Response Report” released late Thursday by the law firm …

With nearly three-quarters of major U.S. banks reporting an increase in fraud losses last year, developers of fraud-prevention technology are scrambling to offer solutions. In the latest example, the Portugal-based technology company Feedzai has announced RiskFM, a tool the company says replaces a singular reliance on card-network data with information …

It’s been 13 years since merchants were allowed to add surcharges to cover much of their credit card processing costs, yet confusion and complexity remain. Speakers at the Transact 2026 conference last week, sponsored by the Electronic Transactions Association, did their part to dispel much of this confusion. “Surcharging is a …

As online traffic powered by artificial intelligence explodes, businesses are struggling to differentiate between legitimate and fraudulent agentic commerce agents, says a study by AI-based fraud-prevention platform provider Darwinium. Some 97% of businesses report an increase in AI-based fraud attacks in the past year, the report says. Among these businesses, …

The Electronic Payments Coalition has opened another front in the battle over the Illinois Interchange Fee Prohibition Act with the launch of an ad campaign aimed at having the law overturned by the Illinois legislature. The campaign comes hard on the heels of efforts by organizations representing financial institutions in …

Three organizations representing the banking community, as well as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency along with former acting members of the OCC, filed amicus briefs late Friday urging the court to overturn the decision to exempt Illinois merchants from paying interchange on the sales tax and gratuities …

Available beginning March 16, the CardFlight Inc. SwipeSimple App Marketplace will enable merchants to use curated applications to help run their businesses. In related news, fintech Jaris Inc. launched a merchant onboarding service with Aurora Payments as one of the first clients. New York City-based CardFlight says the marketplace for …

Kraken Financial, a Wyoming-based special-purpose depository institution operated by Payward Inc., has become the first digital bank to get a Federal Reserve master account. With the account, Kraken will be able to settle transactions directly on core payment rails in the United States, such as Fedwire, the Federal Reserve’s real-time …

New York Governor Kathy Hochul late Monday unveiled new rules to regulate buy now, pay later lenders in the state. The proposed regulations, the governor says in a statement, are intended to protect residents of the state from excessive BNPL fees and the misuse of personal data, and require greater …