Law and Regulation

U.S. retail sales for March decreased 8.7% from February, according to figures released by the Census Bureau. One bright spot was a 28% increase in sales at food and beverage stores from March 2019. Clothing and clothing accessories store sales were down 50.7%.Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) said it is supporting …

Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. have postponed their planned U.S. interchange revisions until July, but when these changes do take effect the net impact on merchants will be deep, according to an analysis released by CMSPi, an Atlanta-based global merchant payments consultancy. Indeed, the new pricing planned by the two …

The good news is that attempted and actual payments fraud declined last year. The bad news is it went down only a tick and remains very close to the all-time high, according to the latest report from the Association for Financial Professionals, a Bethesda, Md.-based trade group for companies across …

Contactless payments already capture a big share of point-of-sale purchases in Canada, and that share is sure to grow with recent announcements by Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. that they are raising their contactless transaction limits to C$250 to limit the handling of cards that could spread the coronavirus, according …

Big hopes for broader real-time payments adoption in the United States could be fulfilled if ACI Worldwide Inc.’s prediction of 4.2 billion in real-time payment transactions by 2024 bears out. In its “Prime Time for Real-Time” report released Wednesday, ACI and research firm GlobalData Plc, forecast the U.S. real-time payment …

With the U.S. House of Representatives expected to sign off Friday on a $2 trillion stimulus bill in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic ravaging the United States, some payments executives are focusing on how to get a share of that cash into the hands of the country’s underbanked and …

The federal government and the state of Utah this week cleared the way for a controversial industrial loan corporation to be set up by Square Inc. that could help the payments company cement ties with its merchant base. But the approvals also drew fierce opposition from banking groups concerned about …

Nacha’s Smarter Faster Payments 2020 Conference has been canceled because of concerns related to the novel coronavirus. Nacha said it is trying to develop a free virtual event with select educational content. Next year’s conference is scheduled for April 25-28 in San Francisco.Dueling bills have been introduced in the Delaware Legislature that would …

As the plague of ransomware continues to roil digital payments and other industries, it turns out state and local governments are proving to be particularly vulnerable. In fact, ransomware attacks on school systems, police departments, city administrative offices, and other governmental agencies are rising fast. Last year, state and local …

Perk Labs Inc. announced an agreement with Alipay that will enable Alipay users to make payments on the Perk platform.EVO Payments Inc. said it will offer the Nexgo Inc. N5 Android smart point-of-sale terminal.Certemy Inc., a professional certification and licensing management platform, introduced new payment gateway options, including Stripe Inc., PayPal Holdings Inc., …