News

August, 2013

• 21 August

  The Fed Will Appeal Judge’s Decision To Overturn Its Durbin-Amendment Rule

  By Jim Daly The Federal Reserve on Wednesday said it would appeal the July 31 decision by a federal judge overturning the board’s rule implementing the Durbin Amendment, the section of 2010’s Dodd-Frank Act that regulates debit cards. The news came from Scott Alvarez, the Fed’s general counsel, at a …
• 21 August

  Bitcoin ATM Maker Hopes Machine Will Bring Bitcoin to the Masses

  Zach Harvey says it’s too hard to get Bitcoins, so next month his new company will start shipping its first machines intended to let ordinary consumers exchange cash for the controversial digital currency. The company, Lamassu Inc., is billing the tabletop device as “the world’s first Bitcoin ATM” and says …
• 16 August

  Amazon Payments ‘Lite’ Debuts To Appeal to Online Sellers Looking for Easier Integration

  Looking to attract more small businesses that just want to process online payments, e-commerce kingpin Amazon.com Inc. is rolling out a new, streamlined version of its 6-year-old Amazon Payments service. The new platform, which includes a simplified application programming interface, front-end widgets, and a testing “sandbox,” minimizes integration time by …
• 15 August

  The PCI Council Wants To Get into Your Head with Its Pending Update to Security Standards

  By Jim Daly The coming update to the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) will include new guidelines about physically protecting credit and debit card terminals, when third-party vendors share security responsibilities with merchants, protecting card data in a computer system’s short-term memory, and strengthening passwords, among others. The PCI …
• 14 August

  Groupon Crashes Traditional ISO Business with a Move into POS Terminals

  The acquiring business, already fraught with rivalry, became even more competitive on Wednesday with an announcement from daily-deals giant Groupon Inc. that it will supply traditional point of sale terminals to merchants as part of a new initiative under its payments division. The Chicago-based company, which last year jumped into …
• 14 August

  Durbin Judge May Allow Merchant Reimbursement; More Retailers Sue over Interchange

  A judge in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday gave the Federal Reserve Board a week to indicate its position about a possible interim rule for implementing the Durbin Amendment, the part of 2010’s Dodd-Frank Act that regulates debit cards, after ruling late last month that the Fed’s current regulations do not …
• 13 August

  Shopify Launches Payments Service To Ease Online Sales for Small Sellers

  Shopify Inc. hopes to lure small online sellers by the thousands to its e-commerce platform by making the typically vexatious business of taking payments as easy as possible. On Monday, the Ottawa-based company announced Shopify Payments, a service that lets Web merchants sign up to accept a broad range of …
• 13 August

  Chase Paymentech Pursues Mobile Payments And More with New Service for Small Businesses

  By Jim Daly The big merchant acquirer Chase Paymentech Solutions LLC on Tuesday announced a mobile-payments service that includes a reader that plugs into smart phones as part of a broader new service for small businesses called Chase Checkout. After testing the service in five states, Dallas-based Chase Paymentech quietly …
• 12 August

  Isis Readies Its National Mobile-Payments Rollout with Two Big Issuers on Board

  The Isis smart-phone-based payments machine is finally getting in gear, observers say, in the wake of several recent developments involving the service that is jointly owned by three big mobile-telecommunications carriers. Giant card issuer JPMorgan Chase & Co. on Monday said that several of its cards will support the Isis …
• 8 August

  Court’s Overturning of the Fed’s Durbin Rule Resurrects ‘Alternative B’ for Routing

  By Jim Daly B is back. That is, what the Federal Reserve Board back in 2011 dubbed “Alternative B” for implementing the transaction-routing requirements in the Dodd-Frank Act’s Durbin Amendment. Alternative B would have required each debit card to provide the merchant access to at least two signature and two …