Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Debit card interchange fees would take a draconian cut under two proposals that the Federal Reserve Board floated on Thursday. Both would set caps of 12 cents per transaction, caps that would take most of the profit out of many transactions, especially signature debit. The board also left open the …
Read More »Canadian Regulators Challenge Visa-MasterCard Credit Card Acceptance Rules
Giving the bank card networks a taste of the medicine they’re getting in the U.S., Canada’s Competition Bureau on Wednesday took action against Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. rules against surcharging and honor-all-cards requirements intended to prevent discrimination by Canadian merchants against credit cardholders. “Visa and MasterCard’s anti-competitive behavior hurts …
Read More »Fed Could Cut Signature Debit Interchange up to 60%, Goldman Clients Say
Financial-industry clients of Goldman Sachs & Co. are bracing for cuts of 40% to 60% in signature debit card interchange rates when the Federal Reserve Board releases its draft regulations for the controversial fee, possibly as soon as Thursday. Many of the investment-banking firm’s clients also expect the Fed to …
Read More »Regulators Accept Visa Europe’s Promise of Big Debit Interchange Cuts
Ominous or joyous interchange news, depending on your perspective, just rolled in from Europe. The European Commission, the antitrust authority in European Union nations, on Dec. 8 accepted Visa Europe’s proposal to reduce debit card interchange by up to 60% in nine countries. The EC’s action, while having no legal …
Read More »Separating Dodd-Frank’s Winners from Its Losers
The turbulent regulatory and legal atmosphere enveloping the U.S. payment card industry is blowing the industry into camps of winners, losers, and those in between. The biggest losers: Visa and MasterCard, large debit card issuers, and consumers. Winners: merchant-funded rewards networks and big merchants. Also likely to gain in the …
Read More »PayPal’s Opening Shots in a Scramble for T-Commerce
Having recently struck deals that will bring it to the physical point of sale, e-commerce processor PayPal Inc. has now branched into an entirely new market. Working with a television-technology specialist in Plano, Texas, PayPal has positioned itself to handle what promises to be a burgeoning flow of transactions from …
Read More »2011 Is Looking Like a Breakthrough Year for Mobile Capture
Next year is likely to be a breakthrough year for a technology that lets consumers deposit checks using a camera-equipped mobile phone, according to a research report released this week. While mobile remote deposit capture (RDC) has been confined to a handful of pilots and has had its share of …
Read More »Observers Express Caution About the Carriers’ New NFC Venture
Forty-eight hours after the announcement by a trio of major wireless carriers that they plan to launch a point-of-sale mobile payments system, reaction from expert observers and others in the industry tends toward caution about the immediate prospects for Isis, the carriers’ joint venture. Isis is expected to launch some …
Read More »Visa Suggests an Interchange Plan to the Fed; Merchants Blast It
Visa Inc. and a prominent law firm serving financial-industry clients want the Federal Reserve Board to regulate debit card interchange by setting an “average effective interchange rate” and then letting the payment card networks set their own rates as long as the average interchange rate on transactions subject to regulation …
Read More »Consumer Groups, Banks Battle to Influence Fed’s Debit Rules
Recent meetings between Federal Reserve staff members, consumer groups, and payments executives show just how divergent the views are as the Fed prepares the first-ever regulations on U.S. payment card interchange. Consumer groups are pushing for “at-par” debit card interchange—essentially, no interchange. A big regional bank, however, said the Fed …
Read More »