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• In a huge legal development for the payment card industry, the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today overturned a lower court’s 2013 approval of a $7.25 billion settlement of a merchant class-action lawsuit accusing Visa, MasterCard, and some banks of antitrust violations in setting credit card interchange. The appellate …

• Grocery store giant The Kroger Co. filed a federal lawsuit against Visa Inc. accusing the card network of trying to force it to allow customers to verify EMV debit card purchases with signatures, and thereby route transactions to the Visa network, rather than with PINs as Kroger prefers, The …

The Kroger Co. on Monday sued Visa Inc. over the network’s alleged efforts to force the nation’s leading grocery-store chain to route EMV chip debit card transactions over Visa’s network by having customers sign for purchases rather than enter PINs. Kroger, the largest retailer after Wal-Mart Stores Inc., according to …

Merchants, in their argument for PIN rather than signature authentication for EMV chip card transactions, may have industry opinion on their side. According to an informal poll conducted this week by Digital Transactions News, two-thirds of readers agree that the merchants suing the card networks over the issue have a …

• The Merchants Payments Coalition, a Washington, D.C., lobbying group, released a new statement decrying what it calls a “poison pill” provision embedded in a bill proposed earlier this month by U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, to reform the 2010 Dodd Frank Act. The provision would repeal the debit-interchange curbs …

One of the biggest changeovers in the history of general-purpose credit cards is set for this weekend when warehouse retailer Costco Wholesale Corp. stops accepting American Express Co. cards and begins taking Visa Inc. cards. In an email to its customer-members this week, Issaquah, Wash.-based Costco said to “mark your …

• Visa Inc.’s Canadian unit posted an “open letter” in Canadian newspapers Thursday to protest Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s plan to stop accepting Visa cards in its 400 Canadian stores beginning July 18 because of allegedly high acceptance costs. “Wal-Mart has initiated a public flight—something we never wanted—as they are using …

Long-time payments players who like to scoff at Bitcoin as an unproven payments instrument will have to reckon with the robust vote of confidence buyers and sellers of the 7-year-old digital currency have given it over the past few days. Bitcoin’s U.S. dollar value breached the $700 level late Sunday …

The payments industry may never know for sure what prompted Visa Inc. to back off on a potentially lucrative new fee aimed at issuers planning to defect to other networks. But a clue to the decision emerged Wednesday when U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin’s office issued a statement celebrating the move …

• The Texas Attorney General’s office and PayPal Holdings Inc. last week settled the office’s allegations that PayPal’s Venmo person-to-person payments service compromised customers’ privacy and security; PayPal agreed to improve disclosures, ensure that Venmo users know who can see their transaction information, and pay the state $175,000. “We are …