February, 2024

• 1 February

  20 Years And Counting. Thank You

  

  Welcome to a party. Digital Transactions is 20 years old, and with this issue we’re celebrating that milestone with a package of stories tracing the development over the years of 10 key topics in digital payments. You’ll find that piece on page 18. But first, we wanted to pause and …

January, 2024

• 1 January

  How Do You Define Success?

  

  You might think a fledgling payments network that launched in July with 35 participating financial institutions and within less than six months had multiplied that number nearly tenfold could be considered at least a tentative success. Granted, there’s a long way to go for the Federal Reserve’s FedNow real-time payments …

December, 2023

• 1 December

  Who Will Fill in for Visa And Mastercard?

  

  Ever since U.S. Senators Dick Durbin of Illinois and Roger Marshall of Kansas introduced the Credit Card Competition Act last year, we haven’t been surprised at the bipartisan support the legislation has received. After all, the bill promises to contain credit card acceptance costs for merchants, and to do it …

November, 2023

• 1 November

  Pricing By Fiat Is Not Ideal

  

  The jury is out—and will remain so for some time—on the Credit Card Competition Act and its chances of becoming the law of the land. One of the bill’s sponsors—and probably its prime mover—is Sen. Richard Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and on the debit card side of the payments business, …

October, 2023

• 1 October

  Are They Coming for BNPL?

  

  The buy now, pay later craze, which took flight during the Covid pandemic, has turned into a $70-billion-plus segment of the payments industry. But that doesn’t mean the point-of-sale credit product hasn’t stirred controversy among acquiring-industry executives—mirroring, in fact, the diverging opinions held by business observers and regulators generally. We …

September, 2023

• 1 September

  Discover Makes a Mistake

  

  There are serious mistakes, and then there are the really serious mistakes you can’t recover from if you’re the top honcho. Discover Financial Services proved that last month with the departure of Roger Hochschild, who had been an executive at Discover for 25 years and chief executive for five. Discover …

August, 2023

• 3 August

  How Will FedNow Evolve?

  

  FedNow, the Federal Reserve’s real-time payments platform, was supposed to start up toward the end of last month. It’s been eagerly awaited by the U.S. payments industry and will add to the rarefied ranks of instant-payments services for businesses and consumers. But what can we expect when the rollout’s hullaballoo …

July, 2023

• 1 July

  Durbin’s $15-Billion Bet

  

  It’s July, the peak of summer-vacation season, so we apologize in advance if we’re interrupting your beach time with a message about the mundane mechanics of payments. But butt in we will, if only because the the topic of acceptance costs just won’t yield to a seasonal hiatus. As you …

June, 2023

• 1 June

  How Will FedNow Unfold?

  

  FedNow is set for commercial launch next month, but if you’re wondering how the Federal Reserve’s shiny new real-time payments service is going to be used and what it will cost, just look at how early participants are putting it to work now. As Digital Transactions learned this spring, the …

May, 2023

• 1 May

  P2P Gets Some Respect

  

  I don’t know about you, but it seems to me peer-to-peer payments have broken through some sort of barrier. Just in the past few years, the concept of allowing individuals to pay each other via mobile apps has taken root and taken off. Apps like CashApp, PayPal, and Venmo have …