Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
By John Stewart While some startup transaction processors have capitalized lately on the idea of so-called free processing, at least one has now decided to backtrack on that concept. BitPay Inc., an Atlanta-based processor of Bitcoin transactions for merchants, announced Wednesday it is scrapping a plan it introduced only 14 …
Read More »Looking Past Transaction Fees, Dwolla White-Labels a Quartet of API Functions
When Dwolla Inc. in June eliminated its 25-cent transaction fee, it said it intended to make money by launching value-added services that would leverage the network technology it had created. On Wednesday, it launched the latest chapter in this plan with a white-label service that lets banks, businesses, and government …
Read More »Eye on Regulation: Updated List Shows Heavy Activity in the U.S., EU and Malaysia
A new update of a list detailing where public authorities have intervened in payment card merchant pricing and rules shows only one country, Malaysia, was added over the past year, but authorities took new regulatory measures in places on the predecessor list, particularly the European Union and the United States. …
Read More »Separate But Tied Together: Why eBay Is Dropping Non-PayPal Payment Methods
By John Stewart PayPal Holdings Inc. and eBay Inc. went their separate ways just 45 days ago, but already the fallout from that split is beginning to make itself felt. EBay is telling sellers on its main online marketplaces that starting Sept. 27 it will stop supporting three electronic payment …
Read More »PayPal To Eliminate Tiered Pricing for Its Smallest U.S. Merchants
PayPal Holdings Inc. will eliminate volume-based price tiers and charge all of its small U.S. merchants 2.9% of the sale plus 30 cents per domestic transaction come Oct. 1, according to a notice the leading online-payments firm began sending to merchants Thursday. The 2.9%-plus-30-cents tier is the highest rate under …
Read More »Research Casts Doubt on Merchant And Consumer Savings From Durbin Debit Cap
By John Stewart Evidence emerged this week that the Durbin Amendment may not be cutting debit card acceptance costs for merchants as effectively as its backers intended. Nor has it prompted many merchants to pass on their savings to consumers, according to a paper published in Economic Quarterly, a publication …
Read More »PIN-Debit Interchange Drops for Issuers Exempt from Durbin Rate Cap
Issuers are generating less in interchange for PIN and signature debit card transactions than they were 10 years ago, according to the Pulse electronic funds transfer network’s 2015 Debit Issuer Study released Thursday. The study examined transactions made in 2014 from more than 70 debit issuers involving 147 million debit …
Read More »Judge Tosses AmEx’s Settlement With Merchants; Is the Visa-MasterCard Settlement Next?
A federal judge on Tuesday nullified a pending settlement between American Express Co. and merchants in a class-action lawsuit over AmEx’s anti-steering rules because of improper conduct by a co-lead attorney for the merchants. The decision immediately cast a shadow over the $5.7 billion settlement Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. …
Read More »Appellate Court Reinstates ATM Fee Lawsuit Against Visa and MasterCard
A federal appellate court on Tuesday reinstated a proposed class-action lawsuit over ATM pricing rules that independent ATM operators and consumers filed against Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. in 2011 but a district court dismissed in 2013. The ruling originated with three lawsuits filed by the National ATM Council Inc., …
Read More »Five Years Later, What’s the Bottom Line on Durbin? Well, It’s Complicated
By John Stewart Five years after it became the law of the land, the Durbin Amendment remains as controversial as it was then, with virtually no agreement in sight on such questions as whether merchants have cut prices in response to interchange savings or whether consumers have paid more for …
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