July, 2021

• 1 July

  Payments 3.0: The CFPB Is Gearing Up

  

  Signs of the Covid-19 pandemic fading away include things like open restaurants, fully packed stadiums, and a return to travel. But for the financial-services industry, the real end of the pandemic may be signaled when regulators knock at the door. During the pandemic, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau extended certain …
• 1 July

  Security Notes: Prepare for Quantum Randomness

  

  Until the early years of the 20th century the world was modeled as a Rube Goldberg contraption, where a series of levers, handles, belts, and wheels create a long sequence of well-anticipated actions. Quantum trashed this model and replaced it with cosmic dice. The claim of quantum physics is that …
• 1 July

  Shopify’s U.S. Sellers Get Affirm

  

  With e-commerce sales booming, payments players are looking for combinations that can keep online customers engaged and add even more buyers to their ranks. An example emerged in June as Shopify Inc. and Affirm Inc. announced Affirm’s buy now, pay later service became available to “hundreds of thousands” of U.S. …

June, 2021

• 1 June

  Payments 3.0: Regulators Are Zeroing In

  

  The regulatory climate for financial services is warming up, and even companies that have largely escaped notice are feeling the heat. Regulators at the state and federal levels are taking a new look at everything from transaction routing to the ways companies market themselves. While it may look like they …
• 1 June

  Security Notes: Quantum Digital Transactions

  

  Late in the last century, there was lingering resistance from merchants to a new technology that shifted payments to credit cards. But early adopters were handsomely rewarded. For us today, the challenge is to welcome a remarkable new payment theater: the looming quantum. It’s quite a daunting challenge because quantum …
• 1 June

  Is a Lower Debit Cap Coming?

  

  Pressure is building on the Federal Reserve to take action on a debit card interchange-fee regulation that it has left intact for 10 years despite sweeping changes in the payments business, including an onrush of e-commerce transactions over the past year. In part, observers are reacting to a report the …

April, 2021

• 30 April

  Payments 3.0: Nine Hundred Pages of Wisdom

  

  In a world of soundbites and hyper partisanship, a two-volume, 900-page report is at a real disadvantage, especially if it comes from a previous administration. Nonetheless, if the last four years have taught us anything, it’s that important topics might require more depth than your average tweet. In January, in …
• 30 April

  Security Notes: Bitcoin: A Sober Analysis

  

  Seven and one-half billion dollars in ransomware payments per year is the U.S. cost for upholding the tantalizing idea of Bitcoin, and that is but a fraction of the multifaceted criminal activity that owes its surge to a coin that builds trust on ignorance and awe. Pillars of the U.S. …
• 30 April

  A $1 Million Cap for Same-Day ACH

  

  Nacha last month announced it will raise its dollar limit on same-day transactions 10-fold to $1 million, starting in March 2022. The move, which will come only two years after the governing body for the automated clearing house network raised the cap to $100,000 from the original $25,000 limit, comes …
• 1 April

  Payments 3.0: What Happened to the Underbanked?

  

  About 24 million American households have dropped out of the payments scene since 2017. The group once known as “underbanked” Americans has disappeared. To understand where they went, a bit of history is in order. In 2009, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. began doing surveys of American households every two …