Pricing

With interchange costs ravaging their balance sheets, most merchants will tell you they’d far rather take cash than cards. Not Split Bread. In fact, the San Francisco sandwich shop doesn’t just discourage cash, it plain won’t accept it. Cards only, please. “Cash is expensive,” David Sliverglide, chief executive of Split …

  Ideally, merchants that use payment card acceptance services would know which merchant acquirers they work with. But in a recent report from research firm Aite Group LLC, the most common response when merchants were asked to name their acquirers was “Don’t know.” Of the 491 U.S. merchants surveyed for …

Merchant processors can expect federal regulators to continue cracking down on their industry, Robert O. Carr, chief executive of Heartland Payment Systems Inc., predicted in a speech Wednesday at an acquiring-industry conference. The reason for stepped-up federal oversight, Carr said, is that independent sales organizations haven’t policed themselves effectively. He …

By Jim Daly An injunction that puts New York State’s ban on merchants’ credit card surcharges on hold could be a prelude to a bigger legal assault on states’ surcharge restrictions. If pro-surcharging merchants prevail, their actions could add some oomph to a provision in the pending settlement of unrelated …

JPMorgan Chase & Co., which this spring stopped selling Visa gift cards through its network of branches, has now quit the business entirely. The decision comes weeks ahead of the biggest selling season of the year for gift cards but doesn’t surprise some observers, who point to the challenges recent …

All eyes in the payments business were riveted on Brooklyn earlier this month as lawyers wrangled in federal court over the proposed credit card interchange settlement. What many interested parties—including most observers in the courtroom that day–may have missed, however, is that the hearing brought to light for the first …

By John Stewart n The inexorable economics of the Durbin Amendment are beginning to make themselves felt in the vibrant business of network-branded gift cards. n JPMorgan Chase & Co., one of a handful of major banks that offer Visa- and MasterCard-branded gift cards, this spring stopped selling its Visa …

By Jim Daly Plenty of Americans are still getting free checking, but not as many as last year, according to new findings from the American Bankers Association. The Washington, D.C.-based trade group’s latest annual consumer survey says 55% of bank customers spend nothing each month for banking services and ATM …

Findings from an overlooked Federal Reserve Board report from last March portend that the possible cuts in debit card interchange as a result of a major court decision last month could be even bigger than many observers initially thought. In the report, the Fed said that authorization, clearing, and settlement …

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 …