Pricing

A network fee introduced this year by Visa Inc. hands so-called merchant aggregators like PayPal Inc. an unfair cost advantage relative to traditional acquirers and independent sales organizations, a top executive with one leading ISO contends. The fee, known as the fixed acquirers network fee (FANF), is a complicated affair …

Facebook Inc. has just done the equivalent of dumping the euro in favor of national currencies with its new policy that will phase out the Facebook Credits virtual currency. The huge social network, which also is introducing a way to pay for subscriptions, says the changes will simplify the user …

In what may be a harbinger of things to come in mobile-payments pricing models, Boston-based LevelUp has dropped its merchant-acceptance fee from 2% of the transaction to zero. Instead, the company will earn merchant fees of 35 cents per dollar of incremental sales generated by the redemption of rewards earned …

Visa Inc. has been saying for months that the Durbin Amendment’s transaction-routing and network-exclusivity rules, which took effect April 1, would take a bite out of its debit business. Gash might be a better word for the amendment’s initial effects, especially on the Visa-owned Interlink PIN-debit network. The No. 1 …

Online merchants and other card-not-present retailers that have so-called interchange-plus agreements with their acquirers are enjoying significantly lower transaction costs thanks to the Durbin Amendment, if research from processor Litle & Co. posted on Wednesday is any indication. Litle’s numbers indicate its client merchants have seen interchange costs cut in …

The federal government’s new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fixed general-purpose reloadable prepaid cards in its regulatory sights Wednesday with a notice of proposed rulemaking and a public hearing in Durham, N.C., where its senior officials heard both praise for and condemnations of the cards. The CFPB said it would examine …

An obscure transaction code used by the automated clearing house network for debit card payments is surging as major merchants adopt the payment method and offer significant rewards to customers who use it. The POS code, which refers to ACH debit entries initiated at an electronic terminal, accounted for 4.59 …

Visa Inc.’s pricing plans for merchant acquirers in the wake of the Durbin Amendment have generated controversy in the acquiring industry, and now they’re attracting scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Justice, the leading payment card network disclosed on Wednesday. Visa said in a regulatory filing that the DoJ’s Antitrust …

The Federal Reserve Board on Tuesday released data about banks’ debit card interchange income now that the Durbin Amendment is in effect. Not surprisingly, the numbers show that interchange for regulated card issuers plunged. The nation’s leading retailer trade group took the occasion to decry the Fed, even though merchants …

Vending machine payment-network operator USA Technologies Inc. has instituted a two-tier pricing option that gives machine owners the ability to offer discounts for cash. But the Malvern, Pa.-based company says early results show many consumers still prefer card payments even if paying by cash would save them some small change. …