Never mind that the Democratic administration that created Operation Choke Point is gone, a Republican Congressman wants to be doubly-certain that the controversial program that tries to cut off payment services to fraudulent merchants dies. So he has proposals to kill Operation Choke Point in not one but two bills. In …

• More than 100 new merchants have signed a letter to U.S. House of Representatives leaders, bringing the total to 768 since the letter began circulating in November, urging them not to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act’s Durbin Amendment, which put a cap on debit card interchange and set debit transaction-routing requirements. Dodd-Frank is …

In a rare move against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal court has upheld a counterclaim against the agency filed by a company that provides mortgage-payment services through the automated clearing house network. The U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California ruled on Dec. 13 that Nationwide …

A trade group of independent ATM deployers on Thursday issued a report blasting the federal government’s Operation Choke Point targeting high-risk merchants, and the nation’s leading retailer association called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the PCI Security Standards Council on antitrust grounds. While mostly affecting a few merchant …

They came in for more bashing at a House subcommittee hearing Tuesday, but several federal government officials at least got a chance to give their opinions about the controversial Operation Choke Point, an effort by the U.S. Department of Justice supported by bank regulators that aims to cut off access …

Seeking to contrast the merchant-acquiring industry’s actual practices with the impression created by the government’s Operation Choke Point that acquirers turn a blind eye to shady merchants, the industry’s leading trade group on Monday said its members last year discharged more than 10,000 merchants for fraud. That statistic comes from …

The U.S. Department of Justice’s controversial Operation Choke Point, an effort to cut off high-risk merchants’ access to electronic payments by challenging the banks and processors that serve them, continues to draw fire. The latest missile comes in the form of a bill from U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., who …

Operation Choke Point, a U.S. Department of Justice effort to shut down fraudulent merchants by going after payment companies that provide network access, shows no signs of going away any time soon, despite growing merchant and processor frustration with the initiative. Earlier this month, that frustration gave rise to a …

• Juniper Research released a study estimating retailers globally will sustain $71 billion in card-not-present fraud over the next five years. The firm cites the U.S. move to EMV and “delays” in the arrival of the 3D Secure 2.0 protocol among the reasons for the forecasted losses. • Michael S. Blume, …

The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this spring climbed on a regulatory bandwagon that has federal agencies attacking disfavored industries by going after the payment processors that serve those industries. The CFPB named four merchant-acquiring companies as defendants in a lawsuit against six people and their associated debt-collection companies. The …