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 …

April, 2023

• 1 April

  Don’t Blame Crypto

  

  Cryptocurrency has taken a beating in the headlines ever since the FTX scandal broke last fall. But last month it got much worse as a trio of banks known for their crypto-friendly lending collapsed, sending shock waves through the larger economy. The fate of Silicon Valley Bank was especially egregious, …

March, 2023

• 1 March

  A Fast Reckoning

  

  Wow, that was fast. Last month, we ran a cover story that reviewed the track record of the three huge processor mergers that all took place within weeks of each other in 2019. With the perspective of more than three years, we thought the time had come to size up …

February, 2023

• 1 February

  Confronting the CFPB Question

  

  A federal appeals-court ruling handed down in October rattled advocates of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and they haven’t stopped quivering since. That’s because the decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit does what years of detractors’ objections and arguments have failed to do—it strikes at …

January, 2023

• 1 January

  Risk Will Always Assert Itself

  

  It has in recent days become apparent—as it has over and over again for centuries—that financial risk can only be managed and mitigated. Despite what breathless investors in the ill-fated FTX exchange may have thought, risk can neither be wished nor washed away. Ironically, the epic FTX collapse in November …
• 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, 2022

• 1 December

  The Race for Real Time

  

  As the market for real-time payments continues to develop in the United States—and as the Federal Reserve prepares for a commercial launch of its own real-time network next year—the race is on to capture market share. There are a number of contenders, but one clear frontrunner is The Clearing House …

November, 2022

• 1 November

  The Law is the Law

  

  The business of routing payment card transactions has been much in the news lately, first with a bill that would legislate network choice for credit card transactions and then with action by the Federal Reserve to reinforce a requirement that was supposed to guarantee merchants a choice of networks for …