October, 2017

• 1 October

  So, Where Are We With Bitcoin?

  

  If you get rich betting on a certain currency, does that make that currency real? Or must people and businesses agree to accept it as payment for goods and services? If these are the criteria for establishing whether Bitcoin is “real” or not, the 8-year-old cryptocurrency has passed the first …

September, 2017

• 1 September

  Let the Flowers Bloom

  

  No sooner did the Faster Payments Task Force release its final report in July than it was met with criticism that neither the Task Force nor the Federal Reserve was mandating the report’s 2020 deadline for real-time or near real-time payments. Instead, the 300-plus payments executives who had worked on …

August, 2017

• 1 August

  It’s August. Here’s Why It Is Time for the Annual Buyers’ Guide

  How often do you pause to reflect on the pace of change in the electronic-payments business? Yes, we’re all quite busy, so such moments are rare. But they are instructive. A couple of decades ago, the notion of paying merchants with a debit card linked to a checking account and …

July, 2017

• 1 July

  What Whole Foods Could Mean for Amazon—And Payments

  

  We were just wrapping up production of this issue when word came that Amazon.com Inc. had offered $13.7 billion to buy Whole Foods Market Inc. The deal, which is expected to close some time between now and the end of the year, will certainly embed e-commerce kingpin Amazon in the …

June, 2017

• 1 June

  Tokens of Appreciation, Indeed

  Tokenization is nothing new. Various companies have for years offered the service, which replaces the actual card credentials a thief needs to make illicit purchases—primary account number, card-verification value, expiration date—with a random string of characters for digital transactions. But what is new is that Visa and Mastercard have finally …

May, 2017

• 1 May

  EMV in the United States: A Post Mortem

  

  The global chip card standard known as EMV became a reality for U.S merchants, acquirers, and issuers in October 2015. That’s when the liability for counterfeit card transactions at the point of sale shifted, by network rules, from issuers to merchants if the merchants weren’t prepared to accept EMV cards. …

April, 2017

• 1 April

  What To Do With the CFPB?

  

  Among the legacies of that explosion of financial regulation known as the Dodd-Frank Act is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was set up expressly to counter what was seen, in the wake of the financial meltdown of 2007-09, as the overweening power of banks and allied interests. The CFPB …

March, 2017

• 1 March

  A Divided Front Over Durbin

  

  With Republicans in control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, and a Republican in the White House, banks bigger than $10 billion in assets are licking their chops. That’s because their long campaign to get rid of the Durbin Amendment to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act now actually …

February, 2017

• 1 February

  Want Bitcoin? Call Your Broker

  

  Last summer, Digital Transactions published a cover story about Bitcoin headlined “Masterpiece or Showpiece?” In the article, freelance writer Bailey Reutzel pointed out that while the cryptocurrency was invented as a medium of exchange, it has developed instead more like a collectible—something of value that behaves like an investment. That …

January, 2017

• 1 January

  Interesting Times, Indeed

  

  This month, the nation bids adieu to the Obama Administration and ushers in the administration of Donald Trump. The new President is promising sweeping change, and he will have at least four years to bring it about. He’s likely, though, to begin wielding the broom on his first day in …