Pricing

U.S. Bank tried, but it couldn’t make its $6.95 fee for real-time person-to-person payments stick. The nation’s fifth-largest bank by assets disclosed Wednesday that such payments are now free. The Minneapolis-based bank says it was the first to go live with real-time payments over the bank-developed clearXchange P2P payments network, …

How do consumers feel about payment card acceptance costs, often referred to as “swipe fees”? According to a recent National Retail Federation survey, consumers want the existing debit card interchange price cap to continue, and they want credit card pricing to benefit them and merchants as opposed to “credit card …

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 …

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 …

The sweeping 4-year-old settlement between card networks and banks on the one hand and merchants on the other, which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned Thursday, covered a lot of ground. But the case the agreement grew out of had as its central focus credit card …

• 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 …

Visa Inc. on Wednesday filed a counterclaim against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. alleging that the retailer’s May lawsuit against the network is not an issue involving violations of federal regulations regarding debit cards, as Wal-Mart cast it, but a contract dispute. Visa says Wal-Mart “fraudulently induced” it to sign an acceptance …

A federal appeals court on Thursday threw out a massive agreement initially reached four years ago over card-network interchange and acceptance rules, drawing a sudden veil of uncertainty over crucial legal matters much of the payments industry had thought were all but settled. In a 41-page opinion studded with sometimes …

• 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 …

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 …