Magazine

May, 2017

• 1 May

  Should Fintech Be Regulated?

  

  If you want to see a rowdy debate, try gathering a group of colleagues and posing the question of whether or not fintech companies should be regulated. In posing this question to several groups of payments professionals, I have observed that the same arguments, pro and con, keep coming up. …
• 1 May

  Ninth Annual Field Guide to Alternative Payments

  

  The increasing commercialization of mobile payments is showing up in a proliferation of so-called Pays from a bevy of banks, tech companies, and merchants. Time was, a cutting-edge alternative-payment service involved entering card or bank-account details into a branded interface on a laptop computer. Mobile payments were nascent, held back …
• 1 May

  Surcharging Ahead

  

  Merchants like programs that cover their credit card acceptance costs. So do ISOs and acquirers, some of which see a big opportunity in programs that help merchants with surcharging. Surcharging for credit card transactions or offering a cash discount may have obvious benefits for merchants, but these programs also carry …

July, 2016

• 1 July

  Will Wal-Mart Give Visa the Boot in Canada?

  

  Speaking of merchant-network skirmishes, fighting between Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Visa Inc. broke out anew last month when, citing high acceptance costs, Wal-Mart’s Canadian unit announced that it will no longer accept Visa payment cards in its stores through a gradual phase-out set to begin July 18. Wal-Mart’s carefully phrased …
• 1 July

  Certification Delays Crash VeriFone’s EMV Party

  

  It was great while it lasted, but it looks like the chip card party is over for VeriFone Systems Inc., the leading U.S.-based point-of-sale terminal maker, at least for now. The U.S. conversion to EMV chip cards had produced a North American revenue windfall for VeriFone over the past couple …
• 1 July

  Durbin Spars With Visa And MasterCard

  

  Depending on your point of view, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., became either a hero or a villain in the payments business back in 2010 with his Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Act. Among other things, the amendment capped debit card interchange for large issuers, pleasing merchants and ruffling the feathers …