Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews After five years, it looks like class-action lawsuits by ATM independent sales organizations and consumers challenging Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. rules over ATM surcharging on antitrust grounds may finally be headed to trial. The U.S. Supreme Court last week dismissed appeals by Visa and MasterCard after …

Recreational marijuana is now legal in a growing number of states, but cash remains the dominant payment method. Now, however, CanPay, a Littleton, Colo.-based payments provider, has developed a digital payment option that allows legal marijuana retailers to directly debit a consumer’s checking account from the point of sale. Typically, …

• The U.S. Supreme Court gave the green light to class-action lawsuits by ATM operators and consumers accusing Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc. and several U.S. banks of conspiring to inflate the prices of ATM access fees in violation of antitrust law, Reuters reported. The justices dismissed two related cases they earlier had …

By Danny Shader In October 2016, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. released its 2015 National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households, providing valuable insight into the demographics and banking history of the unbanked and underbanked (often collectively referred to as the “financially underserved”). Many are surprised to learn that a …

• Two merchant organizations have filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting a U.S. Department of Justice filing that asks the full panel of the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hear a 6-year-old case alleging anti-steering rules established by American Express Co. are anti-competitive. A three-judge panel of that court ruled …

By Peter Lucas @DTPaymentNews Sweden-based e-commerce payments provider Klarna continues to expand its footprint in the United States by doubling its user base and adding new features to enhance the user experience. More than 2 million U.S. consumers now use Klarna’s streamlined checkout service, generating hundreds of millions of dollars …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Visa Inc.’s practices involving EMV debit card transaction routing, Visa disclosed Tuesday. And the Federal Reserve earlier this month posted guidance about EMV debit routing that, according to retailer trade groups, was issued in response to their objections to Visa’s practices …

By Peter Lucas @DTPaymentNews By the numbers, at least, merchants appear to be paving the way for mobile and contactless payments to become mainstream in the United States. The installed base of terminals ready for near-field communication in the U.S. and Canada is projected to reach 9.2 million by year’s …

• The Federal Reserve posted a notice that a payment network violates the debit card transaction-routing requirements in its rule implementing the Dodd-Frank Act’s Durbin Amendment if the network requires a merchant to allow a cardholder to choose an application that routes to only one network during an EMV debit card purchase. …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews The faster-payments movement in the United States took a key step forward late in September with the automated clearing house network’s adoption of same-day clearing, and now numbers are available for the first full month of faster ACH processing. A total of $4.98 billion on 3.8 …

Consumers who use their Samsung Pay mobile wallets to make a payment will be rewarded for their transactions with the debut this week of Samsung Rewards. Announced Monday, the program enables consumers to earn points for their Samsung Pay transactions, which can be redeemed for retailer gift cards, prepaid Samsung …

• Payments-technology provider linked2pay said it and Push Payments, a payments processor, have made real-time payments available on linked2pay’s Bank Centric Payments platform. • JetPay Corp. reported a 48% year-over-year increase in third-quarter revenues to $15.2 million; the processor also reported a net loss of $2.9 million compared with a $1.7 …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews Merchant trade groups have kept up a steady drumbeat this year in support of the Dodd-Frank Act’s Durbin Amendment with its debit card regulations. But, with Republicans taking full control of the federal government in January, the drumbeat got louder Tuesday when 627 large and small merchants …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews Countless analysts have tried to diagnose what ails the lackluster U.S. mobile-wallet market, but new observations from securities rating agency Fitch Ratings Inc. succinctly identify three primary causes: a lack of compelling value propositions, an overcrowded market, and cyber-risk aversion on the part of consumers. “The vast …

• Rite Aid Corp. announced that American Express Co. cardholders now can use their Membership Rewards points for purchases at its drugstores. They also can use their Plenti points earned using the AmEx-backed coalition rewards service • Growth in consumer revolving credit cooled off to a 5.2% seasonally adjusted annualized rate in …

NetSpend, the prepaid card unit of processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS), is facing a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit filed Thursday over allegations the company deceptively marketed reloadable debit cards. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, alleges NetSpend promised “immediate access” to …

• Gift cards were the most sought-after gifts among consumers queried for a survey about the upcoming holiday season and sponsored by the National Retail Federation; 61% of respondents reported wanting a gift card, followed by clothing and accessories, 54%; and books, CDs, DVDs or videos, 40%. • Merchant processor …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Retailers can expect a bump upward in the dollars consumers load on closed-loop gift cards this holiday season as a festive spirit takes hold and more merchants favor the cards over holiday discounts, according to a forecast released Friday by payments consultancy Mercator Advisory Group. “Retailers …

Even though payments processors have been working with application developers for years, independent software vendors (ISVs) still represent a major opportunity for acquirers and processors. It remains the case that 49% of ISVs do not integrate payments functionality into their systems, according to new research from First Annapolis Consulting, an …

• Citigroup Inc. became the latest bank to introduce a proprietary mobile wallet, in this case Citi Pay, which will launch later this year in Singapore, Australia, and Mexico, and in the U.S. early next year. Working with MasterCard Inc.’s Masterpass digital-payments service, Citi Pay provides online and in-app payment capability, …