Law and Regulation

A new standard unveiled Wednesday by the PCI Security Standards Council could pave the way for more acceptance of contactless payments with no more hardware needed than a merchant’s off-the-shelf mobile phone or tablet. The standard is dubbed Contactless Payments on COTS (commercial off-the shelf devices), or CPoC. It spells …

Prices for Federal Reserve payment services to depository financial institutions will go up by an average of 2.4% on Jan. 2 under a new fee schedule approved last week by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. The Fed estimates Check Services customers will see average price increases of 3.3%. Users …

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect in May 2018. More than one year later, most financial organizations—including banks, payment and trading services, and global exchanges, as well as the companies that rely on them—are struggling to maintain GDPR compliance.  While prohibitive costs and the derailment of other, …

Confirming rumors that the Federal Trade Commission is looking into issues involving debit card transaction routing, Visa Inc. late last week reported the Federal Trade Commission has asked it to voluntarily provide information about its routing practices. In a brief notice in its fiscal 2019 report to the Securities and …

Checkers Drive-in Restaurants Inc., which in May said malware had affected certain of its Checkers and Rally’s locations, said it is aware the malware had affected one more Checkers and Rally’s location and also that the malware had been re-installed at “several” locations the company had previously identified as affected. The company …

Ever since Apple Pay debuted in 2014, Apple Inc. has kept the near-field communication chip in its devices off-limits to payment apps from other companies. But now legislation has appeared in Germany that may force the computing giant to grant access to that all-important chip, which allows Apple phones and …

U.S. Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-Ill.) planned this week to introduce bills that would bar tech firms from developing their own cryptocurrencies and make it more difficult for non-financial firms to obtain charters for industrial-loan corporations, a form of a bank, according to Politico. Garcia’s office did not immediately respond to a request …

The Federal Trade Commission has started a preliminary inquiry into whether Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc., and large debit card issuers are blocking merchants from routing transactions over PIN-debit networks, the Bloomberg Law news service reported, citing anonymous sources. FTC investigators reportedly have contacted merchants and their trade groups, Bloomberg Law said. Spokespersons for …

Compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard remains an elusive goal for many merchants and other organizations that handle general-purpose payment card data. In fact, compliance fell in 2018 for the second year in a row, according to Verizon Communications Inc. Verizon’s newly released Payment Security Report says only …

A retail trade association as well as Target Corp. have endorsed the Federal Reserve’s planned FedNow real-time gross settlement service. In a letter posted last week on the official FedNow comment site, the Washington, D.C.-based Retail Industry Leaders Association said “over the past decades RILA has seen competition and innovation …