March, 2024

• 1 March

  Security Notes: Payments As a National Security Vulnerability

  

  Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, recently testified in Congress that China has cyber-penetrated the United States and that its embedded cyber weapons can be unleashed on the day hostilities break out. This is a sobering thought. Our entire life is cyber-managed: the way we distribute power, water, gas; …
• 1 March

  PayPal Maps a Fastlane for Checkout

  

  A new way of shopping using the PayPal app and related services is in the offing. Announced late in January, the update includes a one-click guest checkout experience, digital receipts PayPal calls Smart Receipts, a revised offers platform, and improvements to business profiles for Venmo, its social peer-to-peer payments service. …
• 1 March

  Payments 3.0: The Delicate Balance of Closed-Loop Cards

  

  As banks and merchants fight over interchange regulation in Washington, the real struggle is in shoppers’ wallets, phones, and Web browsers. Last month, I wrote about how merchants use discounts, surcharges, and direct bank payments to influence consumer behavior. This month, we’ll look at another tool that merchants can use …

February, 2024

• 1 February

  Security Notes: Time for Hard Thinking About Crypto

  

  On Jan. 10, 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission enabled the public to trade Bitcoin without resorting to its cryptographic attributes. This action opens the maverick currency to a massive influx of U.S. dollars—a critical milestone in world affairs. When Digital Transactions was launched, digital transactions were transactions of digitally …
• 1 February

  Payments 3.0: A Trend To Cash And Pay by Bank

  

  The fight over interchange—and the future of payments—is moving to a new arena – the point of sale. Proposed rules on debit card interchange could become a sideshow to the main event that seems to be gearing up at cash registers and in remote payments. Two trends seem to be …
• 1 February

  Why Fiserv Is Seeking a Bank Charter

  

  Giant payment processor Fiserv Inc. wants to take on another aspect of the business with its application for a special bank charter in Georgia. The charter for a merchant-acquirer limited purpose bank, if approved, would enable Brookfield, Wis.-based Fiserv to interact with card networks directly instead of operating through a …

January, 2024

• 1 January

  Security Notes: How AI Escrow Is Creating Global Trust

  

  What comes first, the payment or the service, the money or the merchandise? It is best when they happen simultaneously, but this is not always possible. The seller says, “Pay me now and trust me to deliver later.” The buyer says, “Deliver now, and trust me to pay later.” If …
• 1 January

  FedNow’s Rising Adoption Buoys Its Biggest Rival

  

  A big movement among financial institutions to join the Federal Reserve’s FedNow real-time payments network appears to be benefiting its biggest competitor. “Ever since FedNow launched, we’ve seen a surge of interest in real-time payments,” says a spokesman for the Real Time Payments network, operated by The Clearing House Payments …
• 1 January

  Payments 3.0: Regulators Open the Floodgates

  

  Payments and banking regulators have released a flood of proposed regulations—with more to come—that could reshape the industry and the way consumers access it. Government-relations teams across the financial-services industry have been hard at work trying to digest what all of these rules could mean for their businesses and the …

December, 2023

• 1 December

  Acquirers Seek Answers from a Visa Surcharging Executive

  

  More than 10 years after Visa Inc. wrote its rules permitting surcharging on its credit cards, questions remain among acquirers, especially those selling or considering surcharge programs for their merchants. Now, as more merchants mull surcharge or cash-discount programs to alleviate some of their card-acceptance costs, and with recent changes …